Paywalled /probably not elsewhere lots of papers run globe headline stories
‘It’s just relentless’: Exhausted hospital workers battle another COVID surge - The Boston Globe
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Since March 2020, the weary staff in this Mass. General unit have not gone a single day without treating a critically ill COVID patient. It is difficult for them to see a way out of the throes of this pandemic.
“I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Mover said. “This could be our new normal, which is not OK. Health care will not be OK.”
When the coronavirus first emerged, health care workers rallied to fight their new, unknown enemy. There was fear, but also a kind of excitement about the immense challenge of solving a new problem, Medoff said. That novelty has turned to drudgery.
Even during periods when broader society moved toward normalcy, COVID never left this ICU. The last time numbers ticked down in the fall, Medoff had a sense of foreboding. Sure enough, within days, more COVID patients arrived.
The best efforts of the ICU staff can’t save everyone. Patients die often — sometimes one a day, sometimes two or three. If their families can’t or don’t want to visit, nurses hold their hands at the end.
Some of them are young. The ones that stay in Mover’s mind are the pregnant women, and their babies, who didn’t make it. And the parents who died and left young children behind.
Mover recently took care of a patient whose children read books to her over the phone. The woman couldn’t hear them; she was sedated.
“You always think: What if that were me, and how would my kids handle that?” Mover said. “If I were to get sick, what would they do?”
