Young nurses all over are battling despair as their dream careers seem to be mired in a grim, unrelenting cycle of needless mortalities. Fortunately, the caring sciences attract a lot of natural fighters (not to mention pro boxers and MMA contestants), and some are drawing on their frustration and war-weariness in the hope that their stories will make a difference. After all, people trust nurses even more than doctors; maybe these nurses will reach some of the people who refuse to heed Dr. Fauci.
Nurse of the Week Bailey Baker has been working in the University of Tennessee Medical Center Covid-19 unit for a year and a half now. Baker is doing all she can to stop the pointless deaths of this summer’s Delta surge,l whether on or off duty. A few days ago, the Tennessee ICU nurse shared her experience dealing with the consequences of the state’s abysmal Covid vaccination figures. Patients now in her care at UT Medical Center are “not only young but healthy with no underlying conditions—I’m talking 20s and 30s,” the 26-year-old stresses. “Mothers who have just had babies, mothers with 4 and 5 years olds…. This isn’t like anything I’ve ever experienced in my career.”
Baker spoke to her local news station to try to spread the message to her community and raise awareness of the gravity of the current situation. Surviving Covid, she argues, does not necessarily lead to a full return to blooming health. Even when it does not kill, this virus can bring about life-altering changes and entail a lengthy and painful recovery period. Baker told CBS 8, “You have them on their bellies, you’re encouraging them to do everything that you know of to keep them off that ventilator because you know in the back of your mind that the likelihood of their coming off [the ECMO] isn’t great… And if they do, you know their quality of life is likely to be severely compromised.”
At the outset of summer, UTMC staff were enjoying the deceptive eye of the Covid hurricane. The worst seemed to have passed, vaccines had become readily available, and during breaks, the conversation was even light-hearted at times. They were on the way back to “normal,” surely, after some 14 hellish months? “It was really nice, you know. We kind of got that glimpse of what the old reality was,” she recalls.
But now, “there are more patients—and sicker—than I’ve seen since we started this whole global pandemic.” The most painful aspect of the new surge is that so many of the new patients are Baker’s own age. Mustering her best glass-half-full tone, she says, “hopefully, if they make it, they will recuperate from this illness that is destroying their bodies and their lungs.”
What does she want to say to the people of Tennessee? Bailey Baker, BSN speaks of evidence, of course: “Politics aside, opinions aside, the statistics are that our severely critical patients on ventilators suffering from this virus—are unvaccinated.” Full stop. Back on the glass-half-full side, Tennesseans—like many others—do seem to be responding to the urgency of the Delta invasion. Somewhat, at least. The vaccination rate has nearly doubled in the state since July… after a 200% spike in Covid cases. About 48% of Tennesseeans have now received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine (which is ironic, as Tennessee’s percentage of fully vaccinated adults ranks them at #48 among US states). So, indeed, there is still a great deal of room for improvement, especially among those in Baker’s age group.
Now that Covid is again ending more than 1,000 American lives a day, all we can do is keep stating the facts, again and again, if need be. We hope that people will listen, and pray they recognize that nurses—from those sobbing with pain and frustration as they plead to the carefully composed stoics citing harsh, undeniable data—are not trying to run their lives; they are trying to save them.
To see the full interview with Bailey Baker, see the video at https://www.wymt.com/video/2021/08/23/ut-medical-center-nurse-shares-her-views-inside-covid-icu/.
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