RE: https://mastodon.social/@luckytran/117022276048555718

I posted on Facebook about my experiences working the COVID ICU in 2020. It ultimately led the end of 20 years of hospital chaplaincy when in August of 2020 I suffered a mental breakdown.

The post has over 500 comments and counting. Half of them are other healthcare professionals sharing their stories.

The other half are people calling me a murderer, saying I should be executed, and that I am a granny killer. Comment after comment fat-shaming me, telling me I should have died, and threatening to harm me and my family. Six years after surviving COVID and we still have to deal with this abuse.

Listen, so many of us who worked in the COVID wards wish we had died. Many of us deal every day with survivor’s guilt. I still wake up screaming some nights because I am dreaming about what I witnessed on my 15-hour night shifts. I can still see the faces of the hundreds of patients I watched die.

Yes, therapy helps. But it is still haunting me after all these years. And I still wonder why them and not me.

And stupid me would still go and do it all over again if called.

Yes, I was “only” a chaplain. But let me tell you what I had to do every night. I would start off my night doing rounds of the hundreds of patients in the COVID ICU. Then, I had to go to the worst-off patients and start reaching out to their families. You see, we did the “compassionate extubations” at night. That way we could move their bodies to the morgue with fear of meeting too many people in the halls. So one of my jobs was to contact the families and set up with them a time overnight to contact them on a video call where they could say goodbye to their loved one virtually.

Hundreds of patients in 2020 died at our hospital of COVID. 80% were at night while I was on shift. I was the last person to hold their hand. I was the last voice they heard, if they were even able to hear me. So many families would say goodbye and hang up because they could not handle watching their loved one die.

And then came the supporting of the medical staff tasked with removing them from life support. So many nurses, doctors, and even orderlies who needed to talk, to vent, and to cry. Then on to the next patient.

There were no births to attend to. No happy moments of seeing a COVID patient survive and leave the hospital for me. No, my entire job was in the COVID ICU. The place people entered and left in a body bag.

Who did I talk to? Who did I vent to? No one. No one in administration had considered us Chaplains. We were there to help everyone else cope. We didn’t need any support.

After my breakdown, the hospital changed a lot of things. There were no more 15-hour overnight shifts. It was divided into two shifts overnight. Professional therapists were made available to the chaplains to debrief. It was too late for me, but thankfully the next wave would have a better support system.

I have spent 5 years in therapy now with the diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder and CPTSD. I still struggle. And all this with Dr. Fauci has not helped. It has just reignited old wounds. He deserves our thanks, not a kangaroo court to distract from all the failures of this administration.

Sorry to ramble. And sorry to vent. As so many commenters have pointed out, I am just too weak and worthless to handle the “fake” COVID lie.