Patients with COVID don’t get better in a linear pattern. They don’t get suddenly ill then slowly improve like most diseases.

They get deathly ill, barely survive, improve a little, decline significantly, improve a little, nearly die again, improve a little...over & over.

Patients with COVID nearly die, are maxed out on mechanical & chemical support, are on every drip & drug, with every tube & line...only to minimally improve over the course of weeks. Then they inevitably decline again. One step forward, three steps back.

For weeks. Or months.

One of these times of massive decline, erasing all of their hard fought for & traumatic effort to achieve, they slip backwards & they don’t come back. They are so beaten down, they run out of options.

We see it again & again & again.

Healthy people. Young people. People on no previous medications. People with no preexisting lung, heart or chronic conditions. They get COVID, they fight for their lives, and despite our very best efforts & weeks of intense therapies...they die.

The first round of COVID was awful. It was personally scary & professionally traumatizing.

This next wave is somehow even worse. Because now, despite being personally protected with vaccines, we still know what’s coming for these patients & their families.

It’s impossible not to get connected to the families we see on video chats & give detailed countless updates to throughout multiple shifts. We cheer with them on good days. We cry with them on hard days. We are the patients only physical contact. We know the road ahead is hard.

So please get a COVID vaccine - any vaccine - when you can. I don’t want to cry with your loved ones. I don’t want to give bad news to your mama. I don’t want to have to hold your hand as you die.

Please get vaccinated. I’m doing my part - please do yours.