Yeah, I’m finding all a bit much now.
I have a dread fear in the pit of my stomach of the health service I work for is now going to see a steady rise of people with serious respiratory disease, people who are in hospital, short of breath, desperately unwell and afraid, and sadly aren’t allowed to have relatives to comfort them through this.
I’m finding it a bit much that this disease may rampage through care homes again with a criminal lack of concern from our government. I’m finding it a bit much that staff there, the staff on absolute shit pay, will be providing the absolute lion’s share of the palliative care for people who they care for, know and love.
I’m finding it a bit much that my good friend who is an intensivist will have to go through again the ordeal he did in April this year. A continuous and unrelenting wave of patients needing intubation and respiratory support, many of them dying and him having to support relatives through their loved ones death via an iPad screen. I’m constantly reminded of his words to me when I asked him how he was “It shouldn’t be like this. I care for people who are dying and it should be like this.”
I’m finding it a bit much the thought that if numbers surge and nhs resources are drawn back to caring for the most sick, how we are are simultaneously going to care for the rest of the population. In my job I don’t know how we are going to manage supporting patients in the community with Covid and patients in the community with flu and other respiratory tract infections, as winter approaches. I’m scared about how we are going to support our patients when many of us are likely to become sick ourselves. Stress in clinical staff right now seems to be widespread.
I’m finding it all a bit much the problems for our patients we are having to metaphorically kick down the road. I’m trying not to worry about what is happening to the most frail and isolated patients in our communities and the impact this is having on their physical and mental health. I don’t know if the nhs has the resources to pick all the pieces of this back up again when we finally get beyond the pandemic.
And I am truly, truly finding it a bit much those who are now just bored with all this. People who stood outside their houses and clapped in April but are finding it all just tiresome now. People who lack the mental capacity to imagine solutions to this problem that require nuance. That rules will change as the understanding of the disease and daily data of infection rates do. That maybe the answer to some of these problems is reflection on your own personal behaviour and responsibilities.