From me to others: a short reflection
I started writing a journal during the pandemic, but as deaths numbers increased, everything seemed very narcissistic. Writing about my mundane daily experiences of a nursing researcher seemed meaningless and selfish, so I stopped and focused on working on awareness and health education. I started with my family, those close to me […]
The Hospice Ogre
I won’t forget the day the boss leaned into my office doorway at the hospice and said, “They’re calling it a pandemic.” I stared at him. “We’re in a pandemic. It begins now.” We’d seen it coming; still, we looked at one another to mark our last moment of pre-pandemic innocence, the […]
“Sheltering in Place for Beginners” & “As Numbers of Dead Rise, Moths Fill the Room”
Sheltering in Place for Beginners Are you awake? You have relied on anesthesia during the scapel’s trusty removals. In the ice melt of morning sit still, read jokes. Wind predicts drought. You will grow strong in your heart’s ribbed hospital. Become the blue rising up over your bed. Wake to smell a […]
The problem was I could see it
The jammed hallways packed emergency room, the ICU. I could feel the mounting panic in the chest of the staff making it difficult to breathe. The sweat beneath their scrubs and yellow long-sleeved gowns. Their latex gloved hands, N95’d mouths plastic shielded faces. I could see the underground corridor that connected one part of the […]
Did I Deserve to Die When I Was Drunk?
When I meet Peter, he is the first patient I’ve cared for in almost a full year who is capable of smiling. During this pandemic, almost all the patients in our ICU have been so critically ill that they could not smile. They were intubated and sedated, a tube sticking out of their mouth and […]
Copy of One More Scoop: Increased Demands on Nursing During a Pandemic
Nursing is defined by providing care for the sick, further defined by Florence Nightingale as utilizing our environment to provide care for the sick to aid in their recovery. Even back in 1856, Nightingale saw the connections between environment and health, health and community, community and environment: “The health of the unity is the health […]
The Question of a Funeral
Kristen dies suddenly on a Sunday night. We hear about it on Monday when her younger sister Jeannie comes in for dialysis, but Kristen doesn’t. Kristen was eight-years-old, and shared a genetic defect with Jeannie. Both girls require dialysis and need kidney transplants. Transplants are costly, even with insurance, so their […]
Howl
Gallows humor and a healthy level of dissociation when necessary have carried me far in my career. During my nights in the ICU a decade ago I learned these as helpful tools of the trade. Death was all around us and we did our best to strip it off with our scrubs […]
Love in the Time of Covid
The blue-haired girl didn’t love him, not really. At least, that’s how Christian, our Mormon cowboy guide, rationalizes her betrayal-her midnight fornication with his best friend in the flatbed of her F-150, the truck he helped get running after two years stagnant in the fields, pack rats eating its soul. He was going to marry […]
“a reflection break,” “to imagine the impossible,” & “a writing exercise”
Sally Helmi, 2020, I Don’t Know How Much Longer We Can Do This. “a reflection break”, 2020 the experiences that i am a part of are so intense that i often don’t know how to navigate how much space they hold in me and how long they can live in me. despite how exhausting being […]
