Louisville healthcare workers are not heroes, they are martyrs

After watching Grey’s Anatomy, I adopted Meredith Grey’s mantra “it’s a beautiful day to save lives.”

Every morning, I arrive for my shift at University of Louisville hospital about an hour early. After I’ve finished preparing for the day, I sometimes have time to enjoy the one moment of peace I can find as a nurse in 2020.

Typically, the sun rises right at the start of my shift, and I walk to the nearest window and watch the sunrise; one of my favorite things to enjoy. When the sun meets the sky each day, for a moment, it all feels worth it.

It’s not lost on me, the juxtaposition from the outside world to what I experience daily inside the confines of my profession. During a worldwide pandemic, it’s important to still have these moments, because for the rest of my day I will be saving the lives of others.

We are not healthcare heroes, we are dying.

I am so tired I can’t even sleep at night. I am so stressed that I will bring COVID-19 home to my family that I sometimes don’t even want to see them. I don’t drink water for 13 hours because I am afraid to take my mask off. I cry on the way home from work because I am tired of seeing patients die and people still not wearing masks. I am tired.

When this pandemic started the world praised us. To them, we put on our capes and we saved the world. What really happened is that, for five seconds, everyone cared. They stayed home. They wore a mask if they had to go out.

Somewhere along the way, that all changed. Things re-opened. People lived life like the virus didn’t exist. While I continued to live my life filled with constant stress.

We can’t save the world by ourselves. We stopped being heroes when Halloween parties became more important than someone’s grandma living. We stopped being heroes when that planned vacation wasn’t canceled and people went out of state and came right back to work. We stopped being heroes when wearing a mask became inconvenient.

There are open beds right now at the hospital, waiting for the second surge. And they will wait, even with patients in them, because the heroes aren’t coming anymore.

Our heroes can’t save lives anymore, because they are too busy saving their own.