An ICU nurse has shared before-and-after photos that capture the devastating toll that the coronavirus pandemic has had on healthcare workers.
Kathryn, who works as a nurse in the ICU of a hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, shared the two images of herself on Twitter last week in a particularly somber take on the ‘how it started, how it’s going’ meme.
While she looked happy and fresh-faced in the first photo, which was taken in April right after her graduation from nursing school, a more recent photo shows Kathryn looking exhausted, with messy hair, PPE marks on her face, and a disheartening thousand-yard stare.
Kathryn went on to say that she posted the images to urge people to take the virus seriously, pointing out that it’s not just about protecting yourself — it’s about protecting others, including healthcare workers on the front lines.
‘I love being a nurse,’ she tweeted. ‘Didn’t exactly expect to be a new nurse in the middle of a highly politicized pandemic but life comes at you fast and even in a pandemic, there’s nothing else I want to do.
‘Caring for the sickest of the sick is an honor and I treasure my patients,’ she went on.
‘It is devastating to watch people die when those deaths were avoidable and it’s even more devastating when you watch them die the same way, time after time after time. It’s devastating that basic common sense and decency has been politicized.
‘Covid is a brutal disease and I wouldn’t wish the worst of it on my worst enemy,’ she concluded.
