COVID Crisis Nurse Shares Chilling Experience

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, as the U.S. approaches a Thanksgiving like no other, the CDC is urging people against travel to see their families. This is because America has reached yet another grim milestone. As of Tuesday, about 88,000 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, and it’s the highest number the nation has ever experienced. Chelsea Walsh is a traveling crisis nurse who moves from one COVID hotspot to the other. She is serving those hardest hit by this pandemic. And here she is talking to our Hari Sreenivasan about what she’s learned along the way from Texas to New York.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Thanks, Christiane. Chelsea Walsh, thanks so much for joining us. First, let’s just start out by giving us a tour. Where have you been in the United States this year fighting COVID?

CHELSEA WALSH, COVID CRISIS TRAVEL NURSE: Too many places. New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Texas, and I bet a couple states in between traveling.

SREENIVASAN: These are literally the worst places in the United States of where these cases were spiking. You went to the worst places on purpose.

WALSH: Yes. I knew that people needed help and I want to help them.

SREENIVASAN: The hospitals in New York, we saw these images of absolute exhaustion on the faces of nurses and doctors. They seem so overwhelmed because we were still learning so much about what was happening around us. Compare that to say whether you were in Texas or an Arizona, this is months later where we knew a little bit more.

WALSH: To support, really came down to the hospital supporting us. It came down to leadership supporting us. It came down to the community supporting us and listening to us. And then when that stopped, it was probably the biggest shock to nearly always wondering why, you know, nobody was listening to us, we didn’t (ph) have a voice anymore.

SREENIVASAN: And I think a lot of people struggle with that idea. I mean, especially New Yorkers, but we’ve lost 26,000 people to this, in this city, in this region. What part of this do you not understand is real? Now, we are at a point where 10 times as many people, Americans have died from this. We have 12.5 million infections, why is it that when you went to Arizona or Texas, how could these folks not realize that it’s real?

WALSH: That’s the thing. Right now – and being a nurse in 2020, it’s like being a meteorologist and telling everyone, hey, there’s a lightning storm coming. Lightning can kill you. Lightning can hurt or kill your family. If everyone ends up in the hospital at the same time, we may or may not be able to take care of everyone. And then everyone else screams back, we don’t believe in lightning as they run directly into the storm holding metal rods. So, how do you convince people to don’t believe in lightning that lightning is real? That’s kind of where it kind of comes down to.

SREENIVASAN: You know, I want to ask also about a clip that you recently had in the Wall Street Journal, you and a few other crisis nurses sort of catalogued and made diaries of your day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have to put one more tube in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Squeeze my hand.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god. Oh my god. Why is there so much blood?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don’t know.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She’s DIC. She’s going to bleed out.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She’s a full code. She’s a full code.

WALSH: If this happens again, I’m not going to be a nurse anymore. I’m not doing this. I’m not dealing with this. Whatever that was just in the room, I don’t want that. I don’t want to die that way. Oh my god, it was so bad. It was so horrifying to watch her, why she was bleeding so much. I don’t want whatever that was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: What was happening in there?

WALSH: So pretty much a younger person came in with COVID, as the only thing that we knew that she had. And she started bleeding profusely out of her nose, her eyes, her vagina, everywhere at the same time. And in that moment, you don’t know if they’re going to live or die. And then, that realization that this is something that’s contagious, you realize that after you walk out of that hospital today you might die.

SREENIVASAN: And that’s something fairly rare that happens?

WALSH: Yes, it’s a rare publication, but unfortunately it happens. When I personally see patients like this that are young, that are typically healthy, don’t really have medical history, on a ventilator or have heart attacks or strokes from COVID. You see them lying in the hospital bed, and you realize that could be you, that could be your friends, that could be your family. And you walk away just thinking, when’s it going to be my turn in that bed.

SREENIVASAN: Oftentimes, you, as a nurse, are the last person that some of these people see before they die. And you’re the one that’s left to tell a family, often over a cell phone or FaceTime video, that their loved one has passed. Well, what is that process like to do over and over and over again?

WALSH: One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. You watch people you developed a bond with, because neither of you can go home to your families, and you live with them pretty much because you’re there all the time. You develop bonds with these people, and then you watch them go, it’s like watching the friends die. And then, you talk to the families and I’ve had to talk down so many panic attacks. I’ve had to convince so many people the virus is real and that’s why their family has passed. Then, even hug the family when they get in there most of the time. And yet, some people you get off the phone with them, or you see them after they leave the hospital, and all you can think of is that person’s going to go kill themselves. Because a lot of times the family members are the people that give it to the person who died in the hospital, and the guilt that they end up having from that event is so significant.

SREENIVASAN: And yet, you can’t really even say something to them, squeeze their arm in the same room because they’re not there with you. I mean, this sounds like the stuff that you take home and you don’t tell your loved ones about when they asked about, hey, how was your day at work? This is what you are not talking about. And if you’re not talking about this, if other nurses aren’t talking about this, if other doctors aren’t talking about this, what does this do to your psyche?

WALSH: Well, I have therapy once a week now. Well, I have PTSD and I have COVID PTSD. A lot of nurses are now developing it. We all talk about all the time, a lot of us are talking about how, you know, we’re getting away – we’ve got away from bedside nursing and a lot of people will go back to bedside nursing, they go get there. Now, a lot of nurses, they have to start taking medication. We do a panic attacks, guilt (ph) crying spells. We, because we do care about people and we didn’t get into this job to watch a (inaudible) die. And now that is our job and that’s not what we signed up for.

SREENIVASAN: Being a crisis nurse, you’re used to going into places where they’re short staffed, where they’re super busy, where something intense is happening, perhaps it’s recovery from a natural disaster or something else. Why was this so different?

WALSH: It was different because a lot of these places don’t have the support staff anymore. They’ve all quit or been fired. It’s really mostly just doctors and nurses on the ground floor. In some places, the doctors won’t even help in this room. They won’t even go into these rooms. It’s still left up to the nurses. And we felt from the very beginning, most of us have talked about this, that we’ve pretty much been sacrificed, that our lives would be less than everyone else’s from the beginning by being told that only we were allowed and no one else was allowed to go near these patients. So there’s a constant fear of why us and, again, when is it going to be our turn in that hospital bed. There’s also the fact that, you know, we don’t have the PPE and we don’t have the supplies that we need. In some places, it’s felt like a third world country, we’re running out of medication, we have to ration. We’re running out of supplies, we have to ration. We’re running out of staff, we have to ration. And then, the nurse to patient ratio, which is what keeps a lot of patients safe, by limiting how many patients a nurse can have. That’s going up, which is bad, because that means we have less time to spend with each person and let them – we can’t watch everyone at the same time. There’s a lot of very risky, dangerous things that have happened and are happening that make the entire situation very unstable and very unsafe right now. That’s why it’s so different.

SREENIVASAN: Historically, there’s always been a little bit of tension between nurses and doctors, but the best systems are usually when they work together well. And what has COVID taught you about what needs to be changed in the role of what a nurse does?

WALSH: Right now, I think the primary focus hospital should have is to protect their nurses. Because if we’re not there, we’re gone, there’s no more hospital standing, because without us, there’s nobody to do the skills. And these hospitals are already turning into these ghost town like situations where there’s already not enough staffer to take care of a hospital. And we’re doing our best. In some places, I’ve had to be housekeeping. I’ve had to be the secretary. I’ve had to be the phlebotomist. I’ve had to be the pharmacist. I’ve had to do every job in the hospital because nobody else is working. And then, the doctors still won’t go into these rooms. And so, we have to do doctors assessments. So nurses are literally picking up all the fields that are leaving the hospital. And if we’re gone and we’re not protected, these hospitals can’t stand. So right now, the main priority hospital should have is focusing on protecting their nurses, as we’re keeping the hospital standing.

SREENIVASAN: So, Chelsea, someone watching this is going to say, we’ve had Anthony Fauci talking about this. We’ve had so many people, so many doctors, so many experts saying wear a mask, socially distance, wash your hands use common sense. Why is it that we’re also hearing nurses tell us about patients who aren’t literally dying without believing that they have the very thing that’s killing them?

WALSH: Because everything became politicized. Politics invited itself to medicine, and it divided everything. It was never supposed to be like this. And if people want to know who to listen, to listen to your nurses and doctors that are actually working on these patients. Because we know what’s going on every day and we actually do care about everyone. And we don’t want everyone to end up in the hospital or get sick. Like you know the consequences, what happens if the hospitals get overwhelmed? If anyone wants to listen to anybody listen to us, because we care about everyone. And guess what, we hate masks too. We don’t want the economy to go down either. We hate doing all these guidelines as well, we just want this to be over. So if anyone wants an unbiased opinion, ask your nurse or doctor.

SREENIVASAN: I also want to know, how do you not get sick if you walk into hospital after hospital where COVID is running rampant?

WALSH: That’s the thing I’m about due to get sick again. So –

SREENIVASAN: Yes. Meaning, that you have it before.

WALSH: Yes, oh yes. And it’s been a few months, at the very least. And I’ve had a lot of nurse friends, crisis nurse friends, who’ve ended up with the virus two or three times. And on their second or third time, they end up in the hospital bag, some of them on a ventilator. So I’m just hoping that’s not me the next time around?

SREENIVASAN: How do you keep your families from getting sick?

WALSH: I don’t go near my family. When – the last time I saw them, I couldn’t hug them. I haven’t hugged anybody in a long time. I haven’t really been able to embrace my family at all. It’s hard. When you really crave human support and it’s not there, and you can’t have it, I understand that’s really hard for everyone right now, because we’re going through it too. But we’re doing it, again, because we care about everyone. And we want to keep everyone safe. So we do this alone. Yes.

SREENIVASAN: Now to be clear, you don’t work for a specific hospital that you’re on staff of or anything. So, I mean, are you basically working for like the Uber of nursing that sends you to wherever surge rising is?

WALSH: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: You’re an independent contractor?

WALSH: Correct?

SREENIVASAN: What’s your health insurance like if you’re going into these places and getting sick multiple times?

WALSH: I don’t have health insurance. I didn’t have health insurance since May, June. So I can’t go at the hospital if I get sick. There’s lot of nurses right now who don’t have medical coverage, and we continue to work. There’s been a lot that has been going on in medicine. And I, personally, don’t believe it’s fair to nurses what’s happening. We are not being covered if we catch COVID in many cases. In a lot of cases now too, we’re often being terminated from the job because we can no longer work. And we can’t prove that we got from the hospital versus the grocery store. So they let us go and they hired another nurse to take our place.

SREENIVASAN: So since you’re independent contractor, you don’t have to have health insurance to do the work that you do even if the work that you do puts you in harm’s way.

WALSH: Correct.

SREENIVASAN: I don’t think most people will be able to wrap their head around the idea that a COVID or crisis nurse working in COVID units is doing so without health insurance. And if she got sick and was in a hospital bed next to that patient, she might very well never be able to pay for it.

WALSH: That is the reality we are now living in.

SREENIVASAN: So, why do it?

WALSH: Well, because everyone needs help. And it’s not like I can do much else to help anyone else right now. Other than my job, even though it feels like it’s on fire most the time. So I continue to go back to work and every now and then you have those patients or those families who say they really appreciate everything you’re doing. And that they love that you are a part of their life, that you really made a difference. And that helps you to keep going. And then, you see these young ones, the ones that don’t make it, and then there’s more that do. And you see them walk out the door and gives you hope, that maybe things will get better. Maybe people will get better. And then, the next one are roll in the door, but it’s hard. It’s very, very hard. And I don’t know how much longer any of us can keep going on at this rate. Because we’re getting burnt out, we’re getting tired, we’re getting frustrated with all of this. We’re almost at our last limit. It feels like societies been pushing the rubber bands to see how far we can stretch, and that rubber bands just about to snap. America, it’s very real possibility right now that America may be left without hospital systems in many places because many of the nurses will walk out or leave, and they will refuse to work in certain conditions.

SREENIVASAN: You know, we have a lot of families that are getting together for Thanksgiving right now, I guess, the better advice of public health professionals who are traveling to do so. And I wonder if you can tell them, perhaps a story of a patient that you’ve dealt with that sticks with you, that may resonate with them as well on why they should take this seriously.

WALSH: I’ve got a lot of patients. I have, I guess I’ll tell you about one more recently, a young gentleman who is healthy, got COVID from the gym, continue to go to the gym with COVID, ended up having a heart attack and got placed on a ventilator. Then there’s also the mother who got COVID from her son and ended up dying. There’s the mother who got COVID from unknown places, but came to turn nine months pregnant, had the baby in the ICU. The baby ended up passing and so did the mother, and left a couple of children orphan. I’ve seen so many different scenarios play out in real life. And I don’t know how to prove to other people that this stuff happened other than you had to be there or you have to trust me. Or you just going to wait and find out and experience it yourself. And that’s something I can guarantee you nobody wants to go through, nobody.

SREENIVASAN: Chelsea Walsh, thank you so much for what you do. I sincerely mean and I hope you stay healthy. I hope he stays safe. Thanks so much for speaking with us.

WALSH: Thank you.