'A Shot of Hope': What the Vaccine Is Like for Frontline Doctors and Nurses - The New Y... - 0 views
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Monday’s vaccinations, the first in a staggeringly complicated national campaign, were a moment infused with hope and pain for hundreds of America’s health care workers.
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Even as doctors and nurses lined up for the first shots, cheered on their colleagues and joked about barely feeling the prick of the syringe, they also reflected on their grueling months in the trenches of the country’s coronavirus nightmare.
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“It is hope,” said Kenzie Frankl, a registered nurse and clinical care leader for Sanford Health in Fargo who volunteered nine months ago to work in the hospital’s coronavirus unit and walked out of the vaccination room with a Day-Glo bandage on her arm.
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New coronavirus cases have receded recently in North Dakota — which had the country’s highest rate of infections earlier this fall. But the pandemic is worse than ever in Kansas, where Dr. Maggie Hagan took a break from her rounds in Wichita to get vaccinated.
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Five units in her hospital have been turned into coronavirus wards. She sees 50 patients each day.“I almost could cry talking to you now,” she said. “I feel like I didn’t just get a vaccine, I got a shot of hope.
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Then there is the personal toll of working 12-hour shift after 12-hour shift sheathed in protective gear, worried that while one patient is treated another may be deteriorating. Some worried about carrying the virus home while others were treated by friends or neighbors as if they had the plague. Some have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. Many have spent hours after work agonizing over the challenges of treating coronavirus patients.
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Ms. Hansen described the 5,000 frontline nurses of the Memorial Healthcare System as resilient but physically and mentally exhausted by the pandemic
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Receiving the vaccine alleviates some of his fears, but he said he would continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing, just to be safe.
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The lack of concrete options left him and his colleagues feeling demoralized about their ability to help their patients, who were some of the sickest they had ever seen. After long, desperate shifts, they sometimes talk on the phone about the challenge of treating such an aggressive and unknown illness.
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Like many of the doctors and nurses who lined up on Monday, Yvonne Bieg-Cordova, a radiology manager at Christus St. Vincent in Santa Fe, N.M., has watched lots of people die. But nothing prepared her for Covid-19.
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Ms. Bieg-Cordova received her first dose of the vaccine on Monday, a bright moment after a bleak year.
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Ms. Bieg-Cordova said that the past couple months have been trying, but that the vaccine did provide the hope that an end was coming.