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ICU nurse took on anti-mask movement and opposition to vaccinations in passionate Twitter thread lifting the veil on life on the frontlines of America’s struggle against COVID-19.
Intensive Care Registered Nurse Kathryn Ivey took to social media to offer insight into the situation she and countless other healthcare professionals faced.
In the tweets, which have been shared or quoted over 10,000 times and liked over 53,000 times, she describes sitting alongside a COVID patient as he passed away.
“He wasn’t alone. The respiratory therapist and I stayed with him until the end, shaking his hands, telling him everything was fine,” Ivey wrote.
“We told him that he had fought well, that he had been so brave for so long and that he could rest. We wiped his forehead and watched him walk away.”
This heartbreaking scene is familiar to Ivey, who later in the thread makes a list of other people who have succumbed to the deadly virus.
She writes that one had a “two-year-old son” while another victim was “just married” and a third had “finally come out of a decades-long abusive relationship.”
Even more distressing, she reveals to have treated pregnant patients after their death from the coronavirus.
“They are all leaving behind people who will never be well again,” she wrote, later adding “they deserve better.”
A powerful and agonizing account of what’s going on, Ivey is unequivocal in his assessment of the situation, writing, “This shouldn’t have happened. These deaths didn’t have to happen.”
“I keep saying it like I find meaning in it, but the truth is as simple as it is hard to swallow: They died because we let them down,” she says.
“We put our little conveniences on a pedestal, we clung to ignorance – And sacrificed our neighbors.”
The thread can be viewed in full here:
“This is not the update I wanted to give you. Your husband passed away about fifteen minutes ago. I am really sorry.
The rest is more difficult to say. He was not alone. The respiratory therapist and I stayed with him until the end, shaking his hands, telling him he could go.
– Kathryn Ivey (@kathryniveyy) September 5, 2021
Some longer than others. Especially a few seconds, counted by the sudden tingling deep in my spine, a shifting realization that there is more to the world than I can see. A few seconds when the veil opens and the naked truth of the world is revealed almost before closing.
– Kathryn Ivey (@kathryniveyy) September 5, 2021
I’m glad we were able to spare him this latest torment, that amidst the wreckage left by the covid in its wake, there are still moments of mercy and peace, however bitter and hard-won. And beneath it all, a deep feeling of something lost, like a part of the world that bowed.
– Kathryn Ivey (@kathryniveyy) September 5, 2021
And make our neighbors a sacrifice. Every life a bright, lush and brilliant light and gone forever; each leaving something dark and cold in the world they were in. Each letting the others carry the love which now has nowhere to go.
He had young daughters.
– Kathryn Ivey (@kathryniveyy) September 5, 2021
So much love with nowhere to go. Sometimes I think it’s going to break the world in two.
They deserve better.
– Kathryn Ivey (@kathryniveyy) September 5, 2021
Ivey, who works at an unspecified hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, said News week the thread was inspired by the “multiple patient deaths” she has witnessed in recent weeks, adding that many “were not so peaceful”.
“It’s been pretty dark lately,” she said. “We’re constantly full with basically a waiting list of people who need intensive care beds. Lots of patients on ventilators.”
Ivey says they are “almost out of Vents, Bipap and Vapotherms” and that there has been “at least one death per shift.”
Fortunately, she says her facility has been “well staffed” which has made a “huge difference”.
Ivey also reiterated his frustrations with those who “refuse to acknowledge that their actions have an impact on others.”
“There were so many people who were angry that they couldn’t go to bars, clubs or the barber shop and were asked to wear a mask while people were dying,” she said.
“I know blockages aren’t fun and involve a lot of sacrifice and I’m not trying to downplay that. But there were and there are so many people who refuse to acknowledge that their actions have an impact on others.”
His comments come as several states in the United States have reported an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Florida reported a record daily death toll from COVID-19 in August, where Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to push for a ban on mask warrants in schools.
In Georgia, meanwhile, just over 95% of Georgia’s intensive care unit (ICU) beds are at full capacity as COVID-19 infections and death rates continue to skyrocket.
According to Dr Kathleen E. Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, 97% of recent deaths from COVID-19 in the state have been in unvaccinated people.
This isn’t the first time Ivey has gone viral during the pandemic.
In November, she posted a photo comparing a photo of herself graduating as a nurse in March 2020, with one after a 12-hour shift in a COVID department taken in November of the same year. .
lakshmiprasad / Getty
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