Year of the Nurse Quotes

“DECEMBER 2020”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“1) Levophed—a common blood pressure medication. Used to be called “leave ’em dead” because people used it for the sickest of the sick in sepsis and those patients still frequently died, but it has now come back into favor. We were maxed. 2) Vasopressin—another BP med. Not titratable. Left on normal dose. 3) Phenylephrine, aka Neo, from its brand name, Neosynephrine—another BP med—maxed. Pharmacy was mixing higher concentrations of this for us, so that we could give it in less fluid volume for the patient’s sake. 4) Sodium Bicarb—also high-concentrated dose for fluid reasons—given to attempt to combat patient’s acidosis. 5) Fentanyl—pain control—not maxed. 6) Versed—an amnesiac—hopefully makes you “less aware” of WTF is happening to you. Also not maxed, because they were also on…. 7) Nimbex—a paralytic we give to patients to make them “ride the vent” so that they don’t fight it and can save energy, as the vent does the work of breathing for them. 8) Heparin—blood thinner, to reduce the clotting that covid can cause. 9) Amiodarone—heart med, stops arrhythmias. 10) Insulin—which requires hourly insulin checks to titrate effectively. Unfortunately, many covid patients are also on steroids, which means their blood sugars fluctuate all over the place.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Their Fi02 was 100%, which is never good, and their PEEP was twenty-fucking-four.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“If you spent your pandemic fighting masks, voting for Trump, or going on vacation, though? Those of us with the blood you caused on our hands actively wish you ill.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“because if you give stuff up to God, it neatly becomes somebody else’s problem.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Talk about our grace or empathy or resilience under the shittiest conditions most of us have ever known. But don’t say our possibly dying is beautiful.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“We just had a body picked up by an inappropriately hot mortician. Apparently lifting dead bodies is a good workout, yo. It wasn’t just me, all four of my coworkers in viewing range were all, “Whaaaaa????” And then after he left, one muttered, “who else can we kill?” Don’t judge, we’ve got to blow off steam somehow”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Talked to my mom today, who is now feeling much better, post-covid, even though it was the “sickest she’d ever been.” She was telling me how nice it was to be in Texas: it’s so different, everyone goes out to restaurants and no one wears masks. She wanted me to visit sometime soon, and I was all, “Well, once it’s safe,” and then she told me she was worried about my/my husband’s mental health from being such shut-ins and that.... I shouldn’t “live in fear” about covid. I told her I don’t live in fear, I live in science, like I have been doing all this time, trying my hardest not to kill anyone else. It was hard not to throw my phone across my backyard at that point, really. Jesus wept. Can’t wait to go back to work tomorrow and take care of people who apparently did or did not fear covid an appropriate amount, thus ending their lives precipitously.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Herman Cain dies of coronavirus, possibly contracted at a Trump rally.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“My friend, if your economy requires a hundred thousand PREVENTABLE DEATHS to survive... it’s already broken. Defund the military a little or tax Bezos more or some shit—figure it out. Because what we’re going to have for the next few months is in no way shape or form going to resemble the type of “economy!” we all need in order to be a functioning society.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“If your economy requires a river of human blood to survive, consider instead that it’s already broken.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“They’re going to start doing temps on us when we come into work tomorrow. My coworker: “It’s rectal. Bring your own lube.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Let’s begin at the beginning—what is oxygen and why do you need it? The oxygen in the air you breathe is part of the Krebs cycle, which is a biochemical process that produces ATP, the building block of energy for your body. Your body gets the oxygen it needs out of your lungs. When you drown, your lungs are filled with water, and this oxygen transfer can’t occur. No ATP equals death. (Randomly, because if you’re reading this far, we’re all nerds—the reason cyanide kills you is it blocks another function in the Krebs cycle, which also = no ATP = death.)”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“This is a great time for a segue, since I’m on the topic. Who the fuck do you think watched six hundred thousand people die in the United States so far? Because I bet you no more than a few thousand of those people managed to make it home to die, with hospice or without, since we would never send someone home with active covid to infect the rest of their family. But let’s pretend maybe a hundred thousand got out—fine, that still leaves us with half a million corpses. Who held their hands, or tried to, through gloves? Who held phones and iPads up so that they could hear your last words and maybe see your face one last time? Who took care of them for hours, days, weeks, months, greeting you on the phone by name, until your loved one’s final passing? Who tried to give them dignity, in a place and time where it was sorely lacking? Who tried to show them the compassion when portions of the outside world were saying that covid—the very thing that was clotting their blood and stealing their breath—was a lie? It was us. The nurses.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“And before you get all, “Well, it was only the elderly,” go fuck yourself. “It was only the black or brown people.” Go fuck yourself. “Only the fat people.” Go fuck yourself. Or “Only the people with diabetes”? You can go fuck yourself, too. What kind of miserable trash human are you, to decide that someone else’s life is not worth living? Who appointed you God-king of life and death? Fuck, man, I’m the one sitting at the bedside at the end with the morphine, and even I don’t feel that fucking power. What the fuck is wrong with them?”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“THEY COULD NOT BE BOTHERED TO SAVE LIVES. The GOP would rather piss on the ashes of six hundred thousand people than lift a reasonable finger to do anything to stop them from being harmed. If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the GOP, well, I don’t know what to say. (I know I’m preaching to the choir here, most likely. But sometimes it’s good to hear someone else say what you’re thinking. It helps you to triangulate yourself.)”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Now, imagine being a person who knows that getting masks wet makes them unusable and unsafe. Then imagine hearing Donald Trump, lamenting the “throwing away of the mask,” because they can be “sanitized and reused,” and claiming that “we have very good liquids for doing this,” when you know very well no such thing exists. Does it kill your soul quite as much as it killed mine?”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“A large number of us hate a large number of you. (Although likely not the you reading this book.) If you spent your pandemic fighting masks, voting for Trump, or going on vacation, though? Those of us with the blood you caused on our hands actively wish you ill. I’m just being honest.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“Nurses spent a year battling a largely unknown assailant. Running low on gear. Fearing we might bring something deadly home. Getting coughed on by people who pretended that our fights were imaginary, that our struggles—watching people die, day after day, no matter what we did—were literally fake.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

“I’m a hyper-intelligent malcontent who likes to be in the middle of shit. Always have, always will.”
― Cassandra Alexander, Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir