TIFFANY SIMMONS

The real frontline is our community

Tiffany Simmons | Registered Nurse, RN & Oregon Nurses Association member.

Covid-19 is different for everyone. There's little predictability in who fares well and for whom it may be fatal, it does not discriminate. To the those who say it only affects the elderly, or people with preexisting conditions, know that roughly 102 million Americans have one. I guarantee most of us have a friend or loved one with high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, obesity, had pneumonia, etc. I work with COVID patients. Some get sick, get oxygen and go home, others aren't so fortunate. A patient in my care started out walking, talking, and needed just a small amount of oxygen. Within hours they were sent to the ICU for intubation and with fear in their voice made a final request of me to get them a chaplain. I wouldn't see them again for several weeks, they wouldn't see anyone besides staff for a month. When they returned from the icu they had tubes coming from their neck, their nose and their genitalia.

Nurses and doctors are considered frontline, the reality is, we are not. We are the last line when there are no loved ones and nothing standing between you and your life besides our expertise and a ventilator. The real frontline is the community. You must all do your part so that we can continue to safely do ours.

I ask those having careless visits with friends and family, doubting the efficacy of masking, and talking about rights as if they are more important than the safety of others to take a look in the mirror and then take a look at our patients. Walk through our ICU and then speak about how COVID mitigation strategies are an inconvenience and how it robs people of their freedoms. Sometimes the exercising of those freedoms may inadvertently rob others of their right to breathe and their right to even live. If we, as a community, do not begin operating as a more cohesive unit it may be impossible to keep the curve at a manageable level.

So what can we do? I can continue to use my education and training to help covid patients directly. You, the community, must work diligently to combat quarantine fatigue, continue to mask, wash and keep distance. They are the only things scientifically proven to decrease transmission and they are the only tools that will help get us get back to some semblance of normalcy.