Coronavirus Has 'Stripped Our Humanity': Medfield Nurse

MEDFIELD, MA — The following letter to the editor comes from Melissa Coughlin, a Medfield native and nurse at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Coughlin wrote this letter to share the stories of nurses battling the new coronavirus and their patients:

I am a mother, wife, daughter, substitute school nurse, camp nurse, graduate advanced practicing nurse student, member of our town’s Board of Health, and a 20-year bedside nurse at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s neuroscience unit, but not a writer, never a writer.

I saw the opportunity to submit a personal account of our experience on the frontlines, and I must write. I must write to share what our patients cannot tell you. I must write to share what my colleagues have seen and are doing — what you must know.

Almost 20 years ago, September 11, 2001, I biked to work from my apartment in Watertown knowing that this day would change my life forever. It was my first day as a nurse. Around 9 a.m., my life really did change forever; all our lives changed. The first tower came down. I watched from my first-ever patient's room. Life as a nurse became real. So real. I learned most of it was not taught in the classroom. Empathy, compassion, handholding, getting to know my patients, who they are, who they were, what they need, how they feel, their fears and dreams.

In the 20 years, I have held hands with patients who are dying, who are getting news about new brain tumors, new strokes, new diagnoses of MS; the list is endless. I have held hands with family members while their loved ones are being diagnosed with horrible life-changing diseases.

This is different; worse, so much worse. We are scared. We are holding down the fort. We are gowned and gloved and covered. We cannot hold hands with the family members. We cannot hug them. We deny them the rights to be at their loved ones’ sides. We tell them NO. When we tell their wife, son, daughter, husband, mother, or father that their beloved relative will likely not make it through the weekend, we do it over FaceTime.

COVID has stripped our humanity.

I do not work on a COVID unit. I am not deployed. I am on our stepdown unit and will stay to care for our population of extremely sick neuro patients. We have COVID patients under investigation, we have recovering COVID patients and we have lots of enhanced respiratory precaution patients. We have sick patients. Patients who are alert enough to be scared, lonely and who know they are sick enough to have to be there.

Nurses are stretched beyond anything we have ever dreamed of. We are the family members, we are the eyes for the doctors, we are the therapists, we go into the room. When we have a critical event, we gown up and go into the room. We do not social distance. We can’t.

Yet, despite the daily unknowns, we show up. We actually climb the stairs and show up. Yes, the elevators only allow four riders. So, we walk up the stairs with masks on to get to work. My unit is on the 10th and 12th floors. We climb literally and metaphorically; we climb to work every day.

We do not need praise. I promise you this is not why we do this. We do not consider ourselves heroes. We all just want this to be over. I assure you this is not media hype.

This is very real. We want our patients to get the care and love they deserve. We want to feel safe.
We want our humanity back.