When the patients went home, we celebrated with music and clapping

covadonga medrano Nurse Virgen del Mar Hospital

I have worked for ten years in the Intensive Care Unit. I love this work and I think it’s the best. I have never found it hard to work under the pressure of it. There came a point where I wanted a bit of a change of direction and I changed to x-ray. Now I work in outpatient consultations. As well as working in the hospital, I also work at a care home. I was really afraid of catching coronavirus. I would go in with my masks and gear until one day they said: Cova! You need to move from outpatient consultations to work in intensive care, because that’s what you know best and your colleagues need you. I remember that day really well, because it all happened at lightning speed, my God! People were dying… I had worked before as a nurse in intensive care, and there had been people who went into cardiac arrest, strokes, hard stuff, but it wasn’t an everyday occurance. In ten years, I had never seen anything like those worst days. Every day there were people whose hearts stopped, intubations and watching people die. I think that was the hardest thing I ever went through.

I hadn’t cried in a long time, I think since my mother died, and this whole time has been so bad, so much fear, so much uncertainty, fear of getting home and wondering: Have I passed it on to my daughters? I have always been strong in the face of fear, and I have been through a lot of times in life when I was afraid, but this made me realise that the most important things are your health and your Every discharge from icu we family. Without those, you are nothing. have treated like Christmas, When I was in the icu, many colleagues with music and applause. didn’t agree with us using tablets for video calls and phone calls from families. They said it affected the patients too much. Personally, I have seen people respond really well to it, and seeing them lift even a finger or seeing a change in their heartbeat is really important to me. Every day I have worked in icu I have tried to put patients in contact with their families. My colleague and I firmly believe that this works and really helps the patients. Every time a patient is moved out of intensive care, we have celebrated as if it’s Christmas, with music and applause. Many patients with poor prognosis have recovered had looked as if they weren’t going to make it. There are a lot of bright spots – like the time when a patient came back the month after they had been discharged, just to thank us. Or there was my colleague Victor, an auxiliary nurse who got really sick, and who sent me a message just to say: Thank you! And how, because I am one of the few who has family, my colleagues would change shifts with me so I could have more days off. I think I had Covid without symptoms. I am not sure when it was, but there was a time when I felt quite bad, very tired, but it passed. And there were weeks on end where I just worked the whole time, and at two jobs. As well as my home. I would think: Is this normal? Sometimes I needed to relax, I just wanted to help out at home, and I would say to my husband: let me at least wash up. My husband’s name is Alberto and my daughters are Covadonga, 7 years old, and Carlota, 5 years old, and then there’s Bruno, our dog. The name Covadonga is Asturian and it comes from the name of a battle. The person who has felt it the most is my older daughter. She is very sensitive and was always saying to me:

MADRID — SPAIN

mama, please don’t get infected, please don’t do anything at home, why didn’t you choose a different profession? Mama, please help as much as you can, but don’t catch the bug. I think if I died and came back, I would still choose to be a nurse 100 times over, and I say that to my daughters, my friends and anyone who asks. The song, Resistiré (I will make it through) became our anthem. I have many regrets. The main one is the deaths. Each death feels like a failure. At the same time, I think about how much we fought and I believe we are all winners in this tough situation. I had a carpal tunnel operation on my hands recently, but I am better now. On 10 September I will probably go back to work, because I still have stitches. I spoke to my supervisor and they told me things are quite bad again. Now, instead of Covid patients occupying one floor like before, they have two. I hope that if things get bad again I can go back and help. �