We have been in lockdown for two weeks now. Healthcare workers, those of us who work in Public Health, also take shelter with our families at home, but with one exception: we can't get the patients, our colleagues, and the hospital out of our heads.
A mix of feelings between fear and courage that is impossible not to have when you have been in the trenches. A soldier who, when entering the hospital (a kind of battlefield) and putting on the white uniform, all fears disappear and only focuses on a main objective, to help fight the epidemic and save lives.
Helping those patients who need us to be there. Nothing else matters at that moment; you don't even remember the risk you are running for your health and that of your family. You look at them with a smile while they watch you in amazement behind those scarce masks, forgetting that half an hour before entering, what overwhelmed you was an overwhelming terror.
The shift ends, you arrive home and you are afraid again. It is difficult to conceive sleep, but when you wake up you believe in your profession again. And in your colleagues, because they are the weapon we have to fight the virus.
Them, and you. We appreciate the applause, but greater appreciation would be if you stayed at home so that our sacrifice would be worth it.
Finally, I don't want to close this diary without asking the health and political officials, those who proclaim themselves as our "bosses" when our real bosses are the citizens who pay with their taxes both the salaries of the health workers and the managers, that it is NOT a time for recriminations, but to support us and add up.
We are not in offices and management committees. We are the ones who get up every morning or go every night to a shift without having a minimum security that we will not leave infected (20 percent of health workers in the Canary Islands are infected). We are the ones who leave our families at home, and without asking anything in return we carry out our work. Because we accept our responsibility. Some should accept theirs.
#Don'tGoOutStayHome
#WeWillGoOutForYou
#TogetherAddingWeWillOvercome
By Yone Caraballo, Emergency Nurse at Dr. Molina Orosa Hospital (Lanzarote).