I have noticed a trend.

Up go the covid cases, down goes my sleep hours.

It is not necessarily all due to work hours.

It is more the dread of what tomorrow will bring.

For instance, take this week.

Monday, I had no meetings or pressing needs for the day.

I was up at 0622.

I asked myself why.

Yesterday I had to be up at 0645 to get myself together enough to join a zoom call at 0700.

I woke up at 0620.

Lay in bed and then silenced my alarm at 0637.

This morning was going to be a sleep in morning.

Up at 0621.

I asked myself why.

According to my sleep chart that I keep so that I can monitor how much I sleep, I went through some of the same behaviors in April of last year.

When the state was in quarantine.

I’m pretty sure it is related.

Tomorrow I have to be up at 0700 again.

Wonder how long my brain will let me sleep.

0630 would be a treat.

Lambda is the newest, baddest, more likely to kill us all Covid variant.

With the delta variant some vaccinated people get sick.

That is out of 4% that the vaccine doesn’t cover.

But you don’t get AS sick.

And then lambda busts in the door.

And laughs at the vaccines.

And is resistant to the vaccines.

Or as my husband puts it, ‘Delta is the forward team to take out some of the unvaccinated population.

And lambda is the clean-up crew.’

What’s next?

The variant that will raze humanity and salt the ground?

Pfizer and Moderna can keep churning out boosters and will because it is a profit leader.

But if the unvaccinated people aren’t reached, all they are doing is slowing down the unending march to the end.

To quote H.G. Wells’ novel War of the World, “For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things–taken toll of our prehuman ancestors since life began here.”

41,000,000+ people have had covid.

Sometimes twice.

In the US.

613,000+ are dead.

In the US.

We could have stopped this.

We should have stopped this.

How dare we not do everything in their power to protect others?

Some of us are.

Most of us aren’t.

We should be ashamed.

The note, jotted down on a gown card which I use to take notes sometimes instead of a post-it has two words on it.

Twice.

Once as a scribble that I wrote.

Second printed, that I also wrote.

Probably interpreting the words.

An entire 2 x4 card, perforated at the top.

Lots of unused space.

I don’t know.

The two words, written twice are ‘stretcher napper’.

These can be taken 2 ways.

It could mean a person who is taking a nap on a stretcher.

It does not.

No one has time to sleep.

I did spend a very uncomfortable very snowy evening on a stretcher because I wasn’t allowed to go home because of being on call.

But I digress.

It does not mean a person who is sleeping on a stretcher.

They are not that comfortable.

I remember in this instance that it means that the stretcher is missing from outside the room.

The stretcher has been kidnapped and nothing left in its place.

Hopefully it didn’t go to the nearby room.

As their patient’s butt had not been on it.

But my patient’s butt had.

Ew.

On a fun note, I was pleasantly surprised when I told the story to my husband.

He knew was a stretcher was.

Something my coworkers have no idea about.

The things we put patients on, with wheels?

That is a gurney.

A stretcher has no wheels.

It is meant to be a flat place that patients are carried on away from dangerous situations, such as a battlefield.

Or down a flight of stairs, such as evacuation because of a fire.

He was watching a war movie, don’t ask me which one, and he pointed to the screen where they were carrying wounded from the front line and said, “See, stretcher.”

Brought a tear to my eye.

Not too long ago I predicted handwringing and people saying they didn’t know covid was bad.

And they would have gotten the vaccine if they’d only known.

Um, where have you been for the last 18 months?

I am finding it difficult to even look these people in the eye.

And refraining from beating them about the head with a newspaper screaming, “See!”

And calling them unkind names.

At the top of my lungs.

But I don’t.

And now that the hospital has set a time limit for all employees to be vaccinated or file a religious exemption, there has been a stampede to the computers to fill out the exemption forms.

This unsettles me on two levels.

One that my coworkers are these kinds of people and have been merrily going about their way without masks because the CDC said they could.

No, the CDC said the vaccinated could, not the unvaccinated.

Secondly is the religious exemption.

What religion denies life saving vaccination?

In any where besides the faithful’s minds?

And these people profess to practice it.

Right.

Sure.

I had scheduled this to be published on Saturday and then walked away.

And I read an article about the Delta variant and the insanity that is going on now.

The deaths.

The hospitalizations.

The can I get the vaccine now and will it cure me questions.

Is a self-inflected wound.

And I had to come back and edit my post.

Because this is the entirety of what vaccinated people feel.

This is entirely self-inflicted.

And the unvaccinated pulled the trigger.

Yay!

My remaining evening tech is back.

And appalled that I’ve been doing all the evening work myself.

But she is back now and ready to work.

No longer will I have to explain, every time, what it means to do the evening work.

No longer will I have to decide to do the work myself because it is just easier and I can’t justify to myself calling someone in to stock, clean, or set up rooms.

This is a ticking clock, though.

She only agreed to do 4 of the 5 shifts until 2300.

For two schedules.

Still doing all the work on Mondays.

But this is progress.

It is hot.

Damned hot.

Way too hot to run the oven.

I had already planned to start No Heat August early this week.

But the punishing heat led me to think it is justified.

The cookie for the week is edible cookie dough.

A Girl Scout cookie Samoa inspired.

I pretreated the flour to kill any bacteria.

I am softening the butter in sunlight on the porch, which is my new favorite method.

I toasted the coconut.

Now I will put it all together.

I usually make 2 cookie doughs.

The second will be funfetti.

With sprinkles.

Because sprinkles make everything all better.

One could hope.

ALL THE SWEARS!

AORN has been cancelled.

AGAIN!

Because people can’t keep it in their masks.

Or roll up their sleeves for a shot.

Because apparently it “is owning the libs” not to exercise the right to protect others.

Please explain this to me.

I truly do no understand.

This past week my hospital system announced that the covid vaccine is mandated.

With a due date of September 15 to complete both shots.

Or risk termination.

A friend on Facebook expressed surprise that the hospital system had not yet made the shots mandatory, or made it mandatory in the spring.

I told him that that’s back when the system thought that people had a sense of community and personal responsibility to that community.

We know better now.

I track the covid vaccination status of all the surgical patients.

If they are inpatients, I schedule their tests if their case is at least 8 hours away.

If they are not vaccinated and not tested, I make note of that.

If they are not vaccinated and have a history of covid, I make a note of that.

If they are not vaccinated and positive right now, I make a note of that.

And prepare the room for a covid positive patient.

I make these notes on the board, on the case strip that belongs to that patient.

Right now we are using laminated circles with covid pending, covid positive, and not tested.

There are hearts for vaccinated: red hearts for completely vaccinated, as in 14 days since the last shot.

There are hearts for the half vaccinated: half red, half white hearts.

But tonight, for the very first time since vaccination started in mid December, every single, blessed patient was vaccinated.

All 19 of them.

I did not have enough red hearts to mark them all.

I’ve told the maker of the hearts that I need more.

Instead I wrote in the board, in large red letters, all patients have been vaccinated.

With tomorrow’s date.

And then I took a picture of it.

For posterity’s sake.

Just a little bit of hope among the surge.

Delta, delta, delta.

Yes.

The Delta surge is upon us.

A variant, such as Delta, is created when the virus is allowed to run amok.

This is the third named variant.

There is a fourth one out there already.

Delta is dangerous.

Delta is more transmissible.

You know what can slow or stop a virus from forming yet another variant?

Vaccines.

The kind you get in your arm.

I do not care what “people” have told you about side effects.

And the efficacy of the vaccine.

I only care that you care enough about your neighbors to endure a smidgen of pain/side effects in order to get this crap under control.

Because I, as a health care worker, am tired.

I still wear my mask indoors at stores.

I got my second vaccine shot in January.

Early enough in January that I was fully vaccinated at the end of January.

My husband is going back to the office where only fully vaccinated people will be allowed in.

Any bets as to how long until someone gets a breakthrough infection?

Yes, the vaccine should lessen the severity of any of the known variants.

No, I probably won’t die.

But those who are foolish enough to deny the need for vaccination can and will.

I was called in tonight.

And, just like that, the case count for my hospital doubled over the weekend.

36 hours I was away.

Our ICU is 75% covid patients, all of them unvaccinated.

I am tired of this.

Aren’t you?