nursingforsocialjustice

Is it just me or does the whole Covid-19 pandemic now strangely feel like a distant memory? Like a dream that happened? I get why collective memory of historical events fades so fast. I write this as a novice historical researcher deep in the murky waters of my PhD research and also I because I’m watching the first episode of Season 5 of This Is Us. Season 5 takes place at the beginning of the pandemic. 2020. It feels like so long ago but strangely also yesterday. It takes place when the George Floyd incident was still fresh. Seems like forever ago. Has it really only been 3 years?

Before the pandemic my partner and I had a routine. All 4 kids would be up by 6:30 to drop off at daycare by 7:00. We drove into Vancouver together, a 45-60 minute commute. We worked in the same office building, on the same project. In many ways us working on different teams for the same project made the Monday to Friday commute seem okay. We left the office by 4:30 and prayed for no traffic jams to barely make it to the daycare to pick up the kids by 5:30. Rush home, dinner, laundry, bath, fight with the kids to get them all asleep by 9:00. Repeat. We didn’t feel like we had a choice in this matter because we live in the most expensive place in Canada and made the decision to have 4 children in a span of 5 years. For the last 7 years I have had at least one job and as many as 5 at a time to make this all possible. Looking back that seems ridiculous that we maintained that routine for so long.

Cut to the pandemic. No one was going anywhere. Suddenly we were living the dream of both working from home 100% of the time except for when I had to go into the hospital to support with some project implantations. During this time at home I realized I didn’t even know my 2 year old son at all. I went back to work after 3 months and worked so much until the pandemic happened. How could I not know my own child? We lived that life of being home 100 % of the time for more than 2.5 years. For a lot of people the pandemic was a nightmare. And it’s true, it was not all sunshine and rainbows but so many things that happened to me during the pandemic actually made my life better. They brought my family closer together. They allowed me to get through and make progress on some really difficult things that I had to manage personally and professionally.

Cut to today. I feel a little lost. I have a anxiety pit in the bottom of my stomach because I work in healthcare and I feel like there’s no way that I can return to a baseline of pre-Covid. The entire context of my life changed, and right now I feel like I am drowning in panic and really poorly thought out decisions.

I don’t think I have ever felt this way at any point in my nursing career. Maybe it’s because I’m older…and wiser? At the very least I’m more reflective of my life, which I didn’t even think was possible a year ago. Maybe it’s because someone is actively dying in my home. Maybe it’s because my now wheelchair bound, cancer surviving at 78 years old mother turns 81 this year and is looking and feeling more old and dependent than ever (her words, not mine…thigh I do agree). Maybe it’s because my partner with a decade of nurse experience and multiple graduate degrees could barely find a job as an RN in one of the biggest urban centres in Canada that is experiencing one of the worst nursing shortages. I feel like the last 3 months of my life is accidentally missed meetings, pretending I understand acronyms that I have never heard before, wondering if the people I’m in meetings with somehow know more about Canadian nurse history than me even though I’ve been immersed in it for the last two year, and constantly being unsure about myself.

I am pondering. The world honestly may not be that different right now, at least not as different as we thought it was becoming in the thick of the pandemic. But I’m forever different.

Love,

Michelle D.

P.S. I know that even in this feeling of stuck was I have a lot of privilege and choices that many people right now do not.

P.P.S. I’ve seriously looked into being a professional meme maker is a things, and if it’s the right career move to make for a 41 year old woman co-supporting 5 dependents.