Making Waves

By Amber Soucy, MSN RN

Pressure. I can feel it.

Mentally: time constraints limit my bedside contact with patients. I need to be quicker, better, more efficient. But how? Policies are changing, protocol algorithms are rearranging, and all the while, more and more patients are deteriorating.

Physical pressure: mask straps digging into the skin behind my ears, and hard, non-forgiving plastic face shields scrape and chafe my forehead and temples. My skin is breaking down, and behind that mask and shield, emotionally, so am I.

Emotional pressure: I’m downtrodden. I want to give up but can’t. I must persevere, I must continue on. Anxiety-ridden days roll into sleepless nights. Oxygen saturation alarms fill my ears. The sounds are deafening, and then the silence is the same once I’m alone in my bed. I can’t escape the loneliness. I’m overflowing with grief. Could I have done more? Could I have saved them? Would my efforts have made a difference?

Pressure, from every angle; it’s just too much. I’m weighted down by it. Before nationwide restrictions were enacted, us nurses were just dipping our toes in and testing the waters. We still had control. So then we sat down at the water’s edge and dangled from the knees down. As individuals, we held our own; we exerted our power and our rights. We were prepared.

Then, there is an abundance of overtime shifts. I can’t justify sitting on the sidelines feeling helpless, cautiously observing from a distance, especially knowing that I possess the training that could potentially make a difference. I can’t watch from the shore as my team struggles to swim against the current. So I dive in headfirst, not knowing what forces will change the tide mid-swim. 

And boy, do those tides change. I paddle and paddle and swim in a circle, scoping out the scene to try to find the safest route to shore. But there isn’t one. It’s sharks to the left, with glimmering teeth and starving eyes, just waiting for me to make my move so they can pounce and eat me alive. Then there are the others, my friends, my coworkers; they’re all screaming and flailing their arms in the air, attempting to flag down help or to alert others to send assistance. But there isn’t enough personnel on the shoreline. There aren’t enough resources to throw everyone a life jacket, and there isn’t enough manpower to allocate a team to retrieve and resuscitate everyone drowning. It’s every man for themselves.

I’m viciously treading water. My head bobs up and down above and below the water. I’m barely hanging on. I’m drowning. And as I look around, everyone seems to share the same panic-stricken look. Although each is individually struggling to survive, we’re all in this together.

But then a boat arrives. They extract me from the turbulent waves and shark-infested waters. They wrap me up in a blanket and repeatedly tell me that “it’ll all be okay; you’re safe now.”

But am I? Am I safe? Are we all safe? Or are we going to unexpectedly go swimming again in the same uncertain waters in the Fall?

Amber Soucy, MSN RN works full-time as an Intermediate Surgical Trauma Registered Nurse and part-time as a Clinical Instructor for nursing students at a Level I Trauma Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.