Healthcare workers in Indiana are trying to get people to see the pandemic from their own perspective, and the input is particularly grim.
While many will never know the trauma of being on a COVID-19 ICU floor, these healthcare workers are sharing their stories.
Jody White, a respiratory therapist at IU Health Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, shares, "I have never felt this tired in my life." White cares for patients who have been hooked up to ventilators, Fox 59 reports.
White also explained that they tend to see the downfall from feeling sick to losing hope. "We get to know a lot of these patients before they take a turn and see how scared they get," she said. "That is hard to watch also."
But White isn't the only healthcare worker with horror stories. Brandie Kopsas-Kingsley, an ICU nurse, shared, "I can describe the sound the zipper on a body bag makes."
"I know the feeling of my hand on a chest and the feeling of two minutes of CPR before the next pulse check," she continued.
"I can describe with great detail the odd and very ugly of purple-ish gray you turn when your body is suffocating. So, for me, whereas I cannot understand the numbers, I can understand humans behind those numbers and that every single one of those was a life," she said.
As cases climb across the country, Indiana has seen a doubling of hospitalizations in November alone. Indiana even set its highest hospitalization record on November 30 with 3,460 patients.
Meanwhile, healthcare workers are becoming increasingly frustrated with those who aren't doing their part to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
"It is what we need to do," White said. "I mean, to keep everybody safe and everybody healthy and it angers me that people are disregarding it."
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