77 Things to Hate About Covid

Caroline Dew, an ICU Critical Care nurse in Australia, wrote this thread that I want to save. My only criticism is that it's written in the past tense. You can see from these graphs of hospitalizations that the pandemic hasn't ended. Canada has a bigger population, but it's currently in a worse position than Australia. Sylvia Jones says our health care system isn't in crisis despite the unprecedented closures of hospital emergency wards, and I'm terrified to find out what she thinks a crisis looks like.

Dew's thread is a response to the Australian Herald Sun article "The 77 things we hated about the Covid response." (It's behind a paywall so thick I can't even link to it!):

An ICU nurses' response to this h. scum piece. I bring you:

The 77 things I hated about what COVID did to the human body (with Heather Paterson Photography):

1. It killed people
   
   
   
2. I hated that it was so infectious that I would be the only one in the room with them as they died
   
   
   
3. It destroyed lungs. In a desperate attempt to get oxygen into them we would nurse them on their stomachs.
4. 
   I hated the fear in a patient's eyes as they desperately struggled to breathe.
   
5. The decimation of the human body as we fight to keep them alive months into their ICU stay
   
   
   
6. The clots...so many clots
7. The PEs
8. The strokes
9. The DVTs
10. The dead bowel
    
    
    
11. The brain inflammation
12. The confusion
13. The acute delirium
14. The psychosis
15. The hallucinations
16. The brain fog
17. The acute kidney injury
18.  The chronic kidney failure
19. The Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy
20. The heart attacks
21. The heart inflammation
22. The heart failure
23. The heart arrhythmias
24. The circulatory failure
25. The need for intense drugs to keep blood flow to vital organs
26. The multiple huge lines inserted to large blood vessels to deliver these massive doses of drugs
27. The multiple lines inserted into blood vessels to monitor pressures in the body
28. The tubes through the mouth to ventilate lungs
29. The tube through the neck to ventilate lungs longer term
30. The oppressive tight face masks pushing in oxygen & keeping lungs open
31. The copious sputum
32. Helping patients when they can no longer cough out the sputum by sucking it out with tubes
33. The desperately huge breaths that patients take when gasping for breath that they pop holes in their lungs
34. The dead fingers and toes
35. The swollen skin
36. The blisters
37. Skin falling off in chunks
38. Pressure injuries because we had to position patients in abnormal ways as we desperately try to keep oxygen delivery to vital organs
39. The diarrhoea 
40. The nausea
41. The loss of taste
42. The lack of appetite
43. The inability to eat for months on end because of the tubes and weakness
44. The tube through the nose to get liquid food direct to the gut
45. The wounds from surgery after having dead gut removed
46. The bacterial and fungal infections that spread in the immune weakened body
47. The unwanted side effects of life saving drugs
48. The fear
49. The anxiety
50. The stress
51. The pain
52. The itch
53. The weakness
54. The loss of independence
55. The embarrassment
56. The loss of control
57. The loss of connection with the outside world
58. The separation from family
59. The separation from friends
60. Missing out on sharing life events
61. Not being with family members as they also suffered from Covid, not being able to comfort them
62. Not getting to say goodbye to your life partner as they died int he room down the hall
63. Facilitating connections with loved ones over FaceTime
64. Facilitating goodbyes over FaceTime
65. Making 'that' phone call at 3am
66. On the rare chance we could get family in - Rushing to dress the family in PPE meticulously and carefully but quickly to get them in in time
67. Patients not being able to talk. With a tube in your throat, you can't talk.
68. Frustration that you can't communicate.
69. Losing months of your life. Waking up to be told you've been unconscious for three months
70. Isolation
71. Working with a machine to learn how to breathe again.
72. Losing control of your bladder and bowel
73. Learning how to walk again
74. Having to put control of every body function into someone else's hands
75. Nightmares
76. Crying in PPE
77. Knowing all you can do is stroke a forehead, and hold a hand.

What we did back then to prevent Covid further ripping through our unvaccinated population was worth it. What we achieved as a country is something to be proud of.

Another nurse added "the cough, the headaches (patient and staff), facial pressure injuries from proned patient positioning, ETT cuff leaks, forcing HCWs to accept a new normal SpO2 (.85%), the way it tore apart families, redeployment of staff and impact on our health system as a whole."

Just for fun, here's Waterloo Region's Covid hospitalizations from October 2020, 2021, and 2022. How people keep talking and behaving as if the pandemic ended is beyond me! Keep wearing masks, kids!!