Скачать или смотреть A volunteer nurse on the realities of COVID-19

My name is Amy Bowen. I'm a registered nurse in Missouri. I just got back from a deployment in Brooklyn, New York for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Q: What do you want people to know about COVID-19?

A: People don't understand the impact and they don't see how deadly this disease is. They don't see that when you put someone on multiple blood pressure medications because their pressures are so low that it shunts the blood from their extremities to their core to keep them alive, which then kills off their extremities. Their toes and their fingers are black. They're going to end up, you know, possibly need amputations from those. Their skin blisters and it sloughs off and they have oozing sores. So, when you roll them, their skin just comes up. They third-space fluid and so they've become beach balls. Their heads are large and their skin is taut all over. I think if people saw the actual illness and they saw the picture of these people, they would be more cautious.

And then to see all these patients just laying there with no family members. I just can't imagine if my mother or my daughter…and that's it. You know, my daughter did pass away in June.

I miss my daughter every day. I think of her every single day. And I don't want someone else to have to miss their daughter every day, or their mom. And it's so preventable, by washing your hands, by staying inside and social distancing until we get a grip on this and allow the healthcare system to get caught up and stock on, on PPE and medications.

Because the hospital I was in, Maimonides, they were running out of medications, especially in the beginning.

When you all of a sudden go from 50 people on ventilators to 700 or 600 people on ventilators, you need paralytics and sedation medication and it just wasn't available.

I really think if people would just stay inside and be socially responsible and realize that no one's being oppressed, that they're just being inconvenienced. To stay inside and shop online and do the things that you can do, but distance yourself.

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