Last Night I Heard My Best Friend Cry
So...my BF of almost 30 years is a hospice nurse. She's had to go into hospitals and other living facilities with patients with COVID. She's treated patients who appear to be COVID symptomatic, but since they haven't been tested shes not sure.
Now, she's been working with a patient that has tested COVID positive. They are at their private residence and given how the family is handling the situation and access to the PPE she needs, despite every precaution my friend has taken, she at the point feels it's almost impossible that she hasn't been exposed to the virus. She knows what this virus does. She knows her own health history. She scared. She does her job and she loves it. She's good at it, but she's angry she has to fight to get the protection equipment she needs.
She worries she is going to put her husband at risk. She had to call her mother who is in the early stages of dementia that she would not be able to see her until at least 3 weeks after she stops treating this patient...providing she doesn't get sick.
All I could do was listen and be there for her. I have been afraid for her since this whole thing started. She's always telling me it's not a matter of "if" she'll get the virus but "when." I'm hoping and praying she's wrong. I'm hoping that despite her fears and resources, she hasn't been exposed.
When I hear people saying this is a hoax, a conspiracy, just the same as the flu, etc...I want to scream. This is real and someone I love is putting themselves on the line to care for others at their most vulnerable. Despite her fear and the risk, she will continue to show up because this is her job. This is her calling.
All I can do is be there to listen, make her laugh if I can, remind her how special she is, and most of all pray.
While I haven't voted for a Republican candidate for anything in over twenty years, I vow I will never for any other GOP candidate for any office in my life. NEVER. Their craven lust for power put this madman in charge and he is killing people through his incompetence and indifference. They coddle and support those who demand we "reopen" for the "economy" as if dollars are more important than lives. Their hands are stained along with his. They should wear the shame around the neck for a generation if not longer.
I heard my best friend cry last night and I cried too with a mix of tears born of fear and anger.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I know I could never do what she does. I'm not sure I could even be a volunteer like you. My mom was in a nursing home for years starting when I was young and watched and was with her when she died of pneumonia. All that has made it difficult for me to even go to hospitals to visit friends.
Therapy dogs are awesome and I'm sure the nurses appreciate that time. 
I'm not sure how any of us are going to be when this is all over.
Still, I am hopeful. I keep remembering a quote from Samwise in "The Two Towers."
"How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."
