[siren wailing]
-The last year took a toll on all of us.
-He's corona positive, alright?
-We saw a lot more sick people than we used to.
We saw a lot more death.
The same as the general population,
but at the end of the day, you can go home to your family.
Most of us didn't.
You know, we were scared to bring it home to our loved ones.
-This little thing right here
is gonna sit right in front of your mouth
and it's gonna tell me how your lungs are doing, okay?
-The majority of our calls that we responded to
were patients who had COVID-19, some of the sickest of them all.
And with COVID-19, we never got a break.
-We became nurses to save lives.
We weren't able to save every life.
There was no time to grieve.
During the worst of COVID, there was like this pang of pain
that you felt every time that you would lose a patient,
but then you had to immediately refocus and redirect yourself,
reprioritize to the next patient.
-Dealing with COVID-19 for the past year
has been emotionally challenging.
During the peak, every day we had really serious cases --
like, multiple very serious cases.
And everyone needed some kind of oxygen support.
The really bad ones needed ventilators.
Death every day, as well.
-And now you can see
there's patients everywhere because of this.
-When I talk with my co-workers, that's the thing that hits them
the most and left the longest-lasting mark,
was just, like, the unexpected death.
Like, some patients, you knew they were bad,
and then probably they wouldn't make it.
And then there was always those where, like,
you couldn't see it coming, and then all of a sudden,
they required a lot of attention and didn't make it.
-[woman speaking indistinctly over PA]
-My immediate family lives up in Rockland,
which is right over the bridge, about 20 minutes away.
COVID impacted us 'cause
we don't see each other as often now.
At the beginning of COVID,
my dad was diagnosed with cancer again.
They postponed non-emergent surgeries.
And so, in the case of my dad, they planned on doing a surgery
that would allow them to give him a higher dose of chemo.
They weren't able to do it, because everything was postponed
until much later.
So, you know, the cancer got bigger.
He died in September.
-My family is everything to me,
and during the worst of the pandemic here in New York,
they supported me so much,
and they prayed for me every single day.
They cooked for me.
That was such a big deal.
Thanks. You can leave it right here.
-Right here? -Yeah, it's okay.
I went from me living with my parents --
you know, just regular day-to-day life --
to me moving out in like a day to an empty apartment,
living on an air mattress.
That was difficult.
Okay. Now I see them every day.
Usually, after work, I will come home, take a shower,
I'll put on my sleeping clothes, my pajamas and everything,
and now I'm getting ready to see my parents.
I'm grateful because we're all vaccinated
and I feel comfortable seeing them without my mask on.
My mom is the best cook in New York City.
She has to be.
I mean, I know everybody says that about their mom,
but it's true for mine.
-Please pray for everybody's well,
that everybody approach the good in each other
and try to be their best.
-So, what's going on? What can I help you with?
-She has problems with to breathe.
She has pain in the back.
-My wife was actually kind of shocked to see, like,
how much it actually affected me.
But I guess I was scared on multiple fronts.
Like, in a selfish personal way, I didn't know,
if I get COVID-19, how I would be affected by it.
And that was why my wife and I talked
and we decided to live separately
so that they could be protected from possible exposures.
The end of the pandemic is not the end of the damage.
There's a lot of emotional healing --
financial healing, too -- that's gonna have to happen.
We've seen race issues start to come up, too.
There are pretty routinely, like, people saying,
"I don't want an Asian doctor," and, like, using slurs.
Part of that, I think, is a result of this pent-up,
like, unexplored grief and sadness and anxiety.
-Dr Johnson to EMS triage, please.
-The past year, I know some people,
it made them question their choice.
And I don't blame them, because it was scary.
Still is scary.
Me personally, I think it did actually confirm
that I made the right choice to go into healthcare.
I never was like, "Maybe I should stop doing this."
For me, it was like, I'm going to work,
I'm making this happen, and we'll get through this.
-COVID has not gone away,
so I don't feel like it's over for me.
I was meant to be a nurse. I know that from day one,
and I think that the pandemic even further validated
that and solidified that in my heart and mind,
is that this is my path in life.
[siren wailing]
-I know what we're doing matters.
Watching as we all came together,
seeing that band of brothers and sisters
that we have all over the country, all over the world,
it definitely made my bond to this profession stronger.
-I'm out with him. -We're not out of the woods yet.
For the foreseeable future, your first responders,
your hospital workers will be in crisis mode.
We'll just get better at dealing with it.