Well, as all that data implies,
it is still incredibly challenging
for our frontline health care
workers as they fight through
crisis standards of care statewide.
It really isn't experienced
tough to capture in words,
but a cardiac nurse at Saint Lukes did
just that and it didn't just resonate
with frontline medical workers,
but also helped people outside the
medical community understand what
they're going through and what
they're seeing everyday inside.
Our Icus is an experience we really
cannot understand unless we're there.
As time ticks away across the room,
Sarah McDonald ticks
away on her sculpture. We
come here to make messes. Sometimes
pieces of artwork definitely messes.
The creations are crafted carefully,
every move made with purpose.
My work is huge. The emotionally charged
Sarah is also known as the sculptress
ceratops. With an impressive
collection of pieces crafted.
For materials like copper and burnt wood,
she takes great care, locking in the
emotional arc for each individual piece.
In recent months it has certainly
been more challenging to do that.
It's hard. As an overnight nurse at Saint
Lukes working with cardiac patients,
Sarah has seen the worst of COVID.
Seeing one horrible thing,
one horrible traumatic thing and a lot of
deaths after another after another after
another and you just kind of have to go.
OK, well I still have three sick patients.
I gotta get two so you can't really
stop and process it in the time so it's
just one trauma after another after
another after another after another and
it just keeps going and you literally
just keep going on to the next.
That emotion. Is not simply left at work.
It seems silly, but I'm very
thankful that my life partner got a
job on the other end of the state.
He moved at the beginning of August
because it can't leave it at the door.
It follows me home. You know?
Sometimes it follows her here too.
I'm not trying to plug into those.
Not here, so this place for me is has been.
Almost better than counseling.
You know. I get to come here.
My studio mates will check on me and say,
like hey, how you doing?
And if I need to talk we can talk.
If I don't want to talk, I just.
Where can my corner on my projects
this environment helps keep Sarah going.
I don't know that I could continue to
go to my job if I didn't have this,
but it doesn't filter out the
emotions she captured those with this.
It's a long poem.
You guys a different medium.
A poem of raw emotion.
I am an COVID veteran.
This is a different kind of war,
a war some don't believe in a war,
some mock a hoax.
The trauma is real.
The dying is real.
The night before I wrote that poem was just.
The hardest night. I've ever had.
Running from room to room one after
another for seven hours straight just.
Uhm? Putting out house fires, you know.
There's a lot of staring
at a clock's just going.
We just have to make it three more hours.
I know you can't breathe. I know.
I know it's uncomfortable.
I know it's blasting air in your face.
I'll gladly take it off,
just do me a favor,
change your code status first
that hardest night stuck with Sarah.
I woke up in that not was still in my throat.
So I just sat down at my
computer and did a free right,
which is where you just write your thoughts
as they come out and there's no editing.
There's no spell check, you're just
getting him out as fast as they can.
And that's what happened. So and I.
It felt a little bit better
on to the next onto the next
onto the next until morning.
We just have to make it till morning.
We just have to make it while morning.
We just have to make it.
Still morning.
We just have to make it onto the next.
In earnest Sarah and other health care
workers continue to make the same point.
They tell us this is not political.
For them. Medical leaders and frontline
health care workers see first hand the
difference in patients and how much
better a large majority of vaccinated
people do against COVID compared to
their non vaccinated counterparts.
Now Sarah said for her it's it's really
not about left or right or politics.
It's about keeping the community healthy and
relieving the stress on frontline workers.
Medical experts will tell you get a vaccine.
They are safe and effective.