ICU nurse describes long nights fighting COVID-19

Front line health care workers face high volumes of patients

An Atlanta ICU nurse shares how she is working every day to combat the coronavirus.

ATLANTA - “I’ve never seen a volume like this.” Those are the words of an Atlanta ICU nurse working long shifts to treat COVID-19 patients.

Though the days are hard, she says there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

Sarah B shared her story with FOX 5.

“We’re doing medicine that I never anticipated doing in 2020, but we’re going to make it work. We’re going to get our communities there,” Sarah said.

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Her day starts at 6:45 in the morning. She jumps into action as soon as she walks through the doors.

An intensive care unit nurse, Sarah asked us not to use her last name for privacy concerns. She graduated from nursing school three years ago.

“I never anticipated when I graduated a couple years ago that I would be in the heart of a pandemic,” Sarah said. “But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

The hospital where she works like every other hospital in the country has shifted the way they do everything. Nurses change in and out of gowns, gloves, N-95 masks and surgical masks after visiting each patient.

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This can delay getting into the next patient’s room by three to five minutes.

“We no longer allow visitors, so watching these patients for weeks at a time not have a loved one at their bedside has been the most surreal experience. I feel like we’re living like a twilight zone episode,” Sarah said.

“Their cell phones will still ring. You know people want to know where they are and talk to them. That’s weird. It’s just weird.”

Though the losses are hard, Sarah says the successful recoveries are encouraging. And the community support is especially helpful in the effort just to stay strong.

“Every meal that we get at work is one less meal that I then have to go to the grocery store for,” Sarah said. “Just knowing that they’re there to support us, cheering us on, clapping from the distance or the sidelines, that does make the days a little bit less hard.”

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