A time of fast learning and great camaraderie

maría gonzález Nurse Hospital cima Sanitas

I am a theatre nurse and during the pandemic our hospital was a hospital of reference for covid. That meant we took patients from both the public and the private sector. Our hospital has six floors. It isn’t very big. But we do a lot of surgery. We have ten operating rooms and around 87 beds. We had to turn these operating rooms into intensive care units, especially the recuperation areas and another part that was more for patient induction. We put intubated patients there. We even had to turn anaesthetic machines into respirators When I got ill at the end of January, beginning of February. I was very ill, but Covid was still quite uncommon. I personally had symptoms: I felt breathless, I was very tired and I had a temperature of 38.5 °C. I spent some days in bed. I hardly ever get that sick. I spent two days sweating, feeling awful and had a dry cough.

We were very scared at the beginning. You could see it on everyone’s faces. But we were all really supportive of each other and learnt from each other. What one didn’t know, the other taught them.

I started to take a load of things, including natural plant medicines and my usual medication. When I recovered, I had no sense of smell or taste, at a time when we didn’t know about Covid yet. When the state of emergency was declared, we were tested and I had antibodies. We were very scared at the beginning. You could see it on everyone’s faces. But we were all really supportive of each other and learnt from each other. What one didn’t know, the other taught them. You have to remember that at the beginning we were not intensive care unit or anaesthesia nurses, but we learn really quickly and we had respirators and medical pumps. We would change them from their backs to their fronts and in that position, we provided all the care that a critical patient needs. We learnt all this from scratch basically. I remember once in the icu there was a young man we were giving a procedure too and a psychologist came in with a mobile phone. They would record the families and let the patients hear their voices. They used an iPad so they could see the families and it helped them recover more quickly. This was done whether the patients were awake or asleep, but usually they were all asleep. We would put the phone next to them and their grandchildren, children, wives and other loved ones would talk to them. Once I had to leave a patient’s room and go to the bathroom for a really good cry after hearing a four year old girl saying to her father: Papa, please get better, we want you home. Patients have recovered and walked out of here without any obvious after effects, though they are obviously quite weak. Some of them come back to see us and bring us sweets and thank you cards to cheer us up. Thank God, I have a very strong partner at home who has supported me a lot. He also works in healthcare and has good mental health. We would talk about it every day at home. I did a lot of sport and meditated a bit. A while ago I tried to do a very hard climb, almost a 7.5, which was a tough one for me. I fell off the rope but I am fine. I have pictures from the lockdown in Barcelona at the start of the pandemic, and the

BARCELONA — SPAIN

streets are deserted. I would drive to work and the police would stop me and ask for my travel documents. At the supermarket you had to queue. Once the state of emergency was lifted, we could go back to a bit more normality. I am Spanish, from the Canary Islands, now I am in El Hierro on holiday, which was originally declared to be Covid free. My family live here and it’s very different from the life we live in Barcelona. We even go to the beach. We wear masks now, but for the first twenty days of August we lived an almost normal life. It’s almost the end of August now and I think there’s going to be another surge, but not as bad as the last one. Finally, I would like to say that we have a team of colleagues up there who are great. Without the team we wouldn’t have made it. They are all great. They give their all every day! And there is a great team atmosphere. I never worked anywhere as good as this and I have worked in Holland, Belgium, Spain, in Madrid, and the Canary Islands. �