Boy has COVID made a difference in our lives. One of the most important things in life is family. I find it extremely sad that our elderly set in nursing homes and no one is allowed to visit them. This picture is of my family, 5 generations of love and strong women there. My mom loved that little gal there and they had a special bond.
Love is the essence that makes our world work. You can see what lack of caring and love does to a whole country with all the hate filling our country in this day and age.
We need a connection with others. It is a basic human need to live. People who don't get touched become insane or even murder people, it messes us up emotionally and here COVID makes us where we can't touch each other.
When I was working the Emergency room as an ER tech and the Ambulance as an Advanced EMT and doing police work too the things I saw will be forever lodged in my mind and heart. People asked me how in the world can you do that job? Well let me tell you how. I care for other humans, the idea that someone is laying alongside the road bleeding and in pain with no help goes against my nature. I would never want a loved one of mine to lay there and no one help them because it was to unsetting to them. It is more upsetting to me to see them need help and no one is there. There are some days I had to take a break and go to my husband just to get a hug and that gave me the strength to go on. Sometimes it was just a good friend but that touch and that caring would always get me through.
I remember one wreck was so horrible we lost many in our profession that finished the job and then went back to the station and quit. That was in police that were there and EMT's that were there and fire Rescue. I don't think one group made it without someone quitting. It is almost indescribable the pain the rescuers went through. We lost 3 kids and some others and the only one we were able to save was the drunk that had caused the wreck to begin with. I HATE with a passion drunk drivers and what they cause. If you want to drink then drink but no one, I mean no one has a right to get in a vehicle and drive after he has drank at all. Even one beer affects your reaction time. You do not have the right to risk other peoples lives. To make a long story short without a bunch of gory details, we loaded up patients heading to the hospital working like beavers to try and save them and the blood was so bad it was dripping out the back of the ambulances, as soon as one ambulance was loaded another was loading too. We went two directions to get to the hospital, back before air life was in the area. We ran for their lives as fast as we safety could do so.......two days later our board of directors got a written complaint to the board of how unprofessional our crews were as our ambulances were bloody and when we got to thee hospital the ambulance doors were open and they could see the blood and how disgusting it was that our crew members had blood all over their uniforms....really lady??? really???
In our rural area we were lucky to have any advanced EMT's, many rural areas run with first responders. The three of us that were advanced kept our radios and pagers on at all times as people don't decided when they are going to have a heart attack. We responded as a second out call (not on duty) because it was a cardiac event (heart) and in the middle of the night, we threw on our EMT t-shirts and were finishing dressing as we ran out the door. We arrived and the man was unconscious, we dosed medication to him and got him stable and loaded him up and took him to the hospital and he survived with no aftereffects and we were so proud.....and then the board got a letter again complaining that we arrived in T-shirts and our hair wasn't combed and she thought it was unprofessional. Well those minutes it would have taken us to get a uniform on and our hair combed would have cost him his life.
I must admit we had one EMT that refused to go on a call when he had been sleeping until he brushed his teeth. He said how would you like it if you had someone with bad breath in your face? Well if I was dying I don't think I would care........
I survived and wish I could physically still do the job but I survived because I got my hugs. This not being able to hug people is messing people up mentally. Suicides' have gone up dramatically, yes stress has something to do with it but touch can heal so much of that stress. We need interaction between people.
Touch is a necessity. This is why people who have pets live longer. It does not have to be a human but the love of an animal and petting them can also help you. That is why many hospitals let animals come in and even have therapy dogs etc. that come in and visit patients because it works.
It is important that we social distance but we also have to have some touch for our souls to survive. WE can't keep locking our elderly in a jail cell to be served meals to and left to just set alone all day. We can't keep our patients in hospitals in there alone, the effect it has on families is painful and damages us to our souls. I can not even imagine the pain of having one of my loved ones in the hospital trying to survive and I can't go see them. That is as harmful.
I wish I had the answers that plague our world in this modern age. I know many times in the past we had plagues and many died and they were separated and quarantined but in those days it was family members that attended them and hoped they didn't catch it or already had it. The point being they were cared for by a loved one. I admire our nurses and they are caring loving people. I know how much it means to me when I would go to my community hospital and have a friend that is a nurse or doctor on duty and know I was cared about meant to me. It is just different when you know them. A nurses job is a amazing dedicated job and we would be in so much trouble without them but there is nothing like having a loved one there. A hug from them will get you through anything that is why God says "love is the greatest gift of all", it is one of the most beautiful things on earth and the most destructive when it is abused or used unwisely.
I treasure my family and my friends and my animals that give us so much love and strength. Don't judge homeless people that have dogs, they need those dogs, those dogs are their lives. I gave a man on a street corner a bag of groceries and he was so thankful but when I handed out the bag of dogfood he started crying. I know if I hadn't given him the dog food his dog would have ate most of his stuff I had bought. Sometimes that dog is what gets them through life. I know mine have. When mom was so bad I am not sure I would have survived but passed with her if it wasn't for my dogs. When she went to bed at night and I laid and cried my dogs would snuggle me and get me through. People don't understand what they mean to me but for 2 years they were my world, my strength to get through the day as I watched my mom slowly drift away day by day and there was nothing I could do to stop it>
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