“But you have been chosen and you must therefore use such strength and heart and whits as you have.” -Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring

This was the quote I posted on my letter board the night before I started on my newly converted covid floor. I had volunteered to stay behind as my oncology patients were relocated, and within an evening, I was no longer an oncology nurse, but a Covid one.

Before it was an option to volunteer, I knew that I would be doing this work if I had the choice. I told Tom once the pandemic started to pick up, “You know that if I get the choice, I’m going to Covid.” There was never a question for me, and he knew that, acknowledging that if I got sick, then we would both get sick. We were weathering this storm together, just like any other. We called our families, and though I was nervous to tell my mom, she didn’t skip a beat, saying, “I assumed you’d be on the front lines of this eventually.” With their well wishes, I eagerly stepped into a world of infectious diseases, investigational medications, and more PPE than I’ve ever used before.

It was a new challenge at the start, exciting even, to know that we actually we’re taking care of patients affected by the pandemic. I’ve never been in favor of this “front lines” chatter, but I can’t deny that that is what we were doing. I remember shrieking a little while watching the news when the first inklings of Remdesivir started, and I had just administered it that very day. It piqued my curiosity about research, public health, and infection prevention. I felt like we had the inside scoop.

And we did, in ways that weighed on me more than I thought. Reading about the tough stories or seeing the uncomfortable photos is not the same as being there in person. You don’t hear about the 45 year old man declining over a week, ending up in the ICU and on a ventilator. You don’t witness the homeless patient leave AMA because finding Covid friendly housing through the Dept of Health takes too long. You don’t see the married couple, who both being positive can share a room, and watch as one decompensates as the other is in the next bed. You don’t have to be there when your 20 something patient is being tearfully being wheeled off to surgery and you can’t even hug her because she’s Covid positive. You're not the one told to hold up the ICU transfer in case the daughter wants to Facetime her mom one last time, because her mom won’t survive an intubation.

These gut wrenching moments are part of nursing, and definitely woven into our work as oncology nurses. But what is different now is that there is no break, no rest from this work. Cancer is not usually all over the news. Yet now as a Covid nurse, the world, the news, social media, our communities are constantly buzzing about this pandemic. It’s a never ending reminder of what we’re battling at work. We come home and we hear the same statistics, we continue to wear the same masks, we quarantine, we remain surrounded by covid news, only to return and pick up the fight again. We as nurses, and all healthcare workers, are facing the grim realities of this pandemic 24/7, making it that much harder to hear the hospital-wide calls for Anesthesia STAT, to read our patients names on the deceased list.

I joked at one point that it was apropos for the WHO to name 2020 the Year of the Nurse and Midwife. Naturally, it’s the best year for a pandemic! I said. The world did recognize us, and still does. Thrust into the center of this disaster were doctors and nurses, doctors and nurses, all those brave doctors and nurses. The heroes.

“Thank you for your service. Thank you for being on the front lines.”

Oh the perks came flying in, the free food, the free water bottles, supplements, socks, and shoes. I’m not complaining, we were well fed. But yet, though the pandemic is not over, our time as America’s sweethearts has already come to a close. Frustrated last week, I vented about the shift towards reopening, towards moving on. Towards getting over it. But yet, nurses are still here, still taking care of these patients, still holding their hands. Will America, and the world, still remember it’s the Year of the Nurse in December? Will they remember when we threw on isolation gowns and goggles as fast as we could to stop our patients from falling? Will they remember the buttons we sewed onto headbands to protect our ears during 12-hour shifts? Will they remember that, despite any virus, we leaned in close to hear your grandmother’s whispery voice as she struggled to breathe? Will they remember when we stepped up, to be a nurse wherever was needed, whether that be a different hospital, state, or country? Or will the allure of “normal life,” of concerts and restaurants and bars, the rush to leave the uncertainty and fill our days again, erase the memory of when the world stood still and watched as normal people carried out extraordinary work?