Aleixandra Macias from Texas is working on the frontlines in the fight against coronavirus pandemic.
After her eleventh day working in a makeshift ICU set up for patients with coronavirus, the ICU nurse shared a heartfelt post on Facebook.
Posting a photo of herself with visible sores, she revealed that she has “never seen anything like this before.”
The mother-of-four also feels like the fight against the infection has been ‘a game of seeing how long we can keep patients half alive.’
“I have never seen anything like this before, never taken care of someone that is so healthy but at the same time so deathly sick,” Aleixandrea wrote.
“Being in an ICU setting I am keeping my same patients day after day until they die. No one has left our unit yet except in a body bag.”
She also expressed her frustration at the lack of supplies and staff, warning that she and her coworkers can’t do everything to try and save patients as they do not have the necessary supplies.
“I can’t count the times I have heard, “Well we could try and do this but we don’t have this,”” she admitted. “I’m not an ICU nurse at all, but neither is hardly anyone else working these units now.”
The most heartbreaking thing for her has been watching coronavirus patients come in to the ICU, listening to them speak to their loved ones for the last time before being put on a ventilator.
She wrote: “I’ve seen patients arrive on our unit not yet sedated or vented but in extreme respiratory distress and beyond frightened.
“I have explained what COVID is doing to their body, what the risks are of being intubated vs not, and I have listened as these people have called their family members for the very last time prior to being intubated.
“If I can leave here with anything at all, I can know that I helped give them those last moments with their family.”
Aleixandrea added that she is also haunted by the sound of the patients’ phones, which continue to ring as their loved ones try to contact them for more updates.
“After they are sedated, their personal belongings are still there. Their phones still ring,” she shared. “That’s the worst is listening to the phones ring knowing someone is calling and praying they will answer just one more time.”
She added: “My heart hurts so bad tonight for these families who have lost people entirely too soon, for those who are sick and absolutely terrified, and for all of us who will surely have some form of PTSD after this is over.”
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