Description
“Who am I?” This was not just a question I wanted answered, but a question I have been asking myself as I prepared to write this book. “Who am I?” “Why would someone want to read about my story?” Well, this is a book encouraged by fellow healthcare workers, friends, and family following my own personal “fight for life” with COVID.
I am a trauma nurse working at a level one trauma center. This story is about working the front lines during the COVID pandemic of 2020. I take pride in being a team member of those blessed with the burden of meeting people on the worst day of their life at their bedside. However, in September of 2020 I became a person who needed someone on the worst day of my life to be at my bedside.
Despite taking precautions, I became infected with the COVID virus, and it nearly took my life. The purpose of this book is to show how I discovered I did not just need “a person” to meet me at that time, but more so, how I needed and received “an army” of people who helped me through the long recovery process. Not just the physical, or mental, but the spiritual recovery as well, and boy did I receive an army of support. They did not all come at once, some trickled in one at a time, but they were all welcomed and desperately needed.
In my motivational discussions with fellow healthcare workers, I really focus on letting them know how everything they did with me, no matter how little or insignificant it felt like to them, means everything to me. So, if you are reading this book as a healthcare worker, a believer in God, or any person really, never underestimate the impact you have on others. You may have been a member of an army that helps the broken, sick, or lost without even knowing it.
A huge part of my recovery story is my wife. She was thrust into a role neither she nor I ever expected. This book will not only reveal what I experienced from the other side of the bed, but what she endured while watching me needing rather than giving lifesaving care.
Though my belief in the power of God, family, and friends was strong to begin with, it has definitely increased and magnified since.
Much of what I have written happened while I was incapacitated, sleeping, or disoriented. Hopefully, it will provide you with some perspective on how we on the caregiving side of the bed are people, just like our patients are, and we all go through situations where we need someone, even just to sit with us.
So, enjoy this book, but please use its contents to motivate you to become part of “the army” someone truly needs!
