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hospital
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2020-04-08
Impressive experience
When the Covid-19 outbreak first started in New York, it was unfortunate that all of my family was positive. In March 2020, after someone in New York was diagnosed positive, my family did not want me to go out and during that time I was in high school and working part-time. My family including most relatives also started not to work and quarantined at home. One day, one of my aunts came to my house with a cold and a cough, but we didn't think much of it because she just got the flu shot so we figured it might be the aftermath of the shot. After two or three days, we started to have different symptoms. I remember I started with a sore throat, a headache, a fever, and then lost my sense of taste and smell. My relatives also showed different degrees of symptoms, and my grandma had the most severe symptoms. She first had a sore throat, a cold, and a low-grade fever, and then she kept having diarrhea and couldn't eat which caused her to lose almost 10 pounds in just one week. During that time, one of my aunts came to take care of my grandma. Throughout the duration of my grandma being ill my aunt was running on only a few hours of sleep per day since she had to keep an eye over my grandma. I remember that the hospitals in New York were full at that time, many patients died without receiving treatment, and refrigerated trucks were parked outside the hospital to store the dead bodies of patients. The TV news also showed that many people were protesting against the announcement of masks being mandatory when going out. None of them believed that Covid-19 would be serious enough to kill people, and this frustrated me, making me feel the urge to express my feelings towards how serious this virus is. I saw that my grandma's condition was getting worse and worse. We also thought about calling an ambulance to take her to the hospital, but we were afraid that we would not get treatment and we would not be able to visit the hospital. We felt very hopeless. We were on the last straw, thus we were all discussing that if grandma didn't show any signs of improvement the next day, our last resort is to have my grandma sent to the hospital. As a result, the following day, my grandma started to eat and did not continue to have a fever, and her condition began to improve. Overall, Covid-19 has brought my family a lot of distress and I am glad that Covid-19 has started to settle and everything is slowly getting back to normal again. -
2021-05-20
A Potentially "Deadly" Decision
The vaccination was a crossroads decision in my life. I hated that people trusted a vaccine that was rushed into existence, forced on the people by exploiting their fears. Although, I did see the benefits of having this on my record, I still had fear that the vaccine would have unwanted effects on my body, but my fears weren't worth putting my fellow man in danger of contracting a disease that could potentially kill others. I had to make a decision in order for my life to get back on track. I was tired of being stuck in a confined space without social interaction. Being away from friends and family wasn't worth it. So I got my vaccine. Thinking about it now, I am thankful that I was able to overcome my anxiety about the covid vaccine, but I hope in the future there will be a better alternative for the current options we have now. -
2021-01-11
My sisters gift from the hospital: a baby and COVID-19
Beginning of 2021, my sister went into the hospital to give birth. In this time, COVID was at an all-time high, when everyone was afraid to leave their own home. Three days after she has given birth, she left the hospital. A few days later, she started feeling really under the weather. She thought it was postpartum pains but got tested just in case. Turns out she had contracted COVID from the hospital in the time she was giving birth. The pandemic was around, and no one was able to get away from it. As careful as you were, you never know what is going to happen. Just do your best. That is what my sisters story tells me about the pandemic. -
2022-02-27
The Covid-19 Pandemic
Covid -19 has changed how many people lived their lives. It was a hard time for everyone that lasted quite long. From being unemployed, remote learning was difficult for families. I was in my senior year of highschool when the pandemic first hit. I went from being social with my friends everyday to being home quarantined with family for months. Not only was this hard but I had to learn how to adapt to remote learning. This was not an easy task due to the fact your teacher wasn't there to give you a real classroom vibe. We did not even meet on zoom til graduation. This was very upsetting because I never had a real prom and was looking forward to it for my senior year. Being a student during the pandemic was not easy. There were times I wanted to just give up because the teachers would assign a load of work sometimes with no explanation on how to go about it. I can say I made the best out of it. Though we were not able to celebrate graduation the traditional way my highschool stool did their best and it was greatly appreciated. Throughout this whole pandemic my family lost some friends. This was heartbreaking because we could not even go visit them in the hospital or anything. My family made sure every morning my sibling and I were taking our vitamins and these natural remedies to make our immune systems stronger. We changed what we usually eat to more healthy types of foods that will benefit our body. This was a hard experience for my family but we made the best out of it. We spent months together everyday because we did not want to go out and risk anything. Lysol and Bleach became our best friends over time. Food supplies became short when you went to the supermarket and many people were losing money because they couldn't go to work. This was a hard time for many families because a lot of people suffered due to these reasons. It wasn't till a couple weeks after being in quarantine for months til the government decided to give out unemployment. This was a benefit for some familie and hard for others because they still couldn't feed their families. Our lives changed from walking everyone and seeing people's faces to seeing everyone in a mask. Many people till this day don’t feel like it's safe to leave their homes. It's been two years since the pandemic first started and now we have a vaccine that's out here. This may seem like a benefit but even if you do take the vaccine you can still contract Covid-19. This is a main reason as to why many people don’t see the point of taking the vaccine. In the beginning of the pandemic the main people who were getting the virus were older people and those who had weak immune systems. Hospitals were packed with many cases and nurses even became short staff. That was a very scary time to witness the pain in the nurses and patients faces. Overall this was a time to remember. It was many hardships but we made a huge progress to where we are today. I am glad to say I am fully vaccinated so I am doing what's best for myself. I am in college now and finally in a inperson classroom. They soon will drop the mask mandate which will be a complete change when you see people’s faces again. I am glad we are getting back to our normal lives. -
2021-02-17
The Beach
Many people consider the beach as a memorable place regardless if it was a positive or negative experience. Going to the beach had me radiating positivity; something I had not felt in a while. It was chilly day where barely anyone was there because of the weather but also the pandemic was still arise. It was a perfect place to escape your problems, yet escaping reality eventually became inevitable. Soon the funs from the New York Aquarium , Coney Island Beach, IHOP and even the Q train came to an end when what it seems like thousands of people came to my house. And soon enough my mother did too with an event that quickly changed my life and my family as a whole. This story that I have told indicates the possible outcomes of the pandemic: death. This story is important to me because it really changed me as a person and who I am today. The loss of someone you were close to is big event in your life you can never forget. It is also important to me because it made me realize that people really underestimate diseases because of how it is perceived. For COVID-19, no one would expect anyone to die unless they were old or were immunocompromised, yet it happened. It was and is still treated as something that can pass over you but it does not. It can either affect your from first hand or second hand whether you get it or not. This outcome from the pandemic is an event that you will never forget. -
2020-05-01
The start of a pandemic that shock the medical field to its core
I have worked as a NYC paramedic for several years before the pandemic Covid-19 hit the world. As a paramedic, we were trained to deal with most situations that would happen on an emergency basis. We dealt with any situation as simple as a cut on the arm, to as complex as running a mega code on a cardiac arrest patient. When Covid-19 hit NYC, I was unaware of how bad it was going to get. At first, we thought it was a virus that was weaker than influenza, which is something we deal with on a regular basis. At this time, we would get one call a day that was related to Covid-19. I thought that everyone was over exaggerating. Over time, Covid-19 patients became more frequent, and in the matter of a month, it was the only type of call we would get. It was as if every other medical problem that people had went away. But this was because everyone that wasn't infected with Covid-19 was too afraid to go to the hospital. In the month of May 2020, things started to take a turn for the worst. People were starting to get critical on each call, where my partner and I would need to resort to extreme measures like endotracheal Intubation to help them breath. Sometimes, even intubation wouldn’t be enough, and the patient would go into cardiac arrest from the lack of oxygen in the body. It was a very difficult time for me because I felt powerless to stop people from dying to his terrible disease. In June 2020, it got so bad that the hospitals did not have capacity to accept anymore patients that came in. People were put in hallways, next to nursing stations, and hospitals had to dedicate entire floors to Covid-19 patients as they came in. Then another problem started to rear its head. My Co-workers and friends started to get sick. Those of us with families had to also make a choice, either quit their job to protect their families or live apart from them until this was all over. We did not have enough EMT’s and Paramedics to staff the ambulances we had running on any given day. Those of us who were not sick picked up anywhere from 60-90 hours a week. This struggle continues now as well. All over the world, there are not enough emergency services personal to cope with the amount of call volume that we are given each day. Over time we got adjusted to the madness and medicine advanced enough to be able to treat patients so that most did not become critical. Also, the vaccine was made available to the public and things started to get better. I shared my story to show a side of the pandemic most don’t get to experience. It shows how unprepared we were, and how we were able to prevail overtime. I will also include a video to show some insight on the pandemic that was taken with one of the companies I work with. -
2020-04-01
Surviving the Front-Line of Covid-19
This story is about my experience working in a NYC hospital - being on the front-line as the pandemic hits NYC. It is important for me to tell, so that everyone is aware of how unprepared we were. Had we prepared, we could have saved lives. -
2020-03-15
A very COVID year.
My nightmare began in March when the government announced that most businesses would be closed due to the pandemic. The day before, I went to a party and I enjoyed myself. Little did I know that things would begin to change drastically. I heard very few things about COVID-19 before the lockdown, all I knew was that it was a respiratory illness and that the first case was found in China. I never thought that it would’ve made its way to America so quickly. As time went on, the days got even more scary. Schools, malls, stores and even supermarkets were closed. Reality hit when I saw how the cases were spiking in NYC. My job was temporarily closed so I was at home whilst doing my remote learning studies for nearly 3 months. I was so overwhelmed and exhausted mentally. Even though I did not leave my house, my mother and sister did everyday because they were essential workers. Every morning they left, I would panic, I was scared that they would catch the virus in the hospital and bring it home to me. My thoughts began to consume me, especially being home alone all day and watching the news. Hundreds of people were dying and the hospitals were full. Nurses and doctors were also dying. I remember watching the news and hearing about how many bodies there were. The morgues were full and they had to use freezer trucks to temporarily store the bodies. Watching the news every day made me anxious and sick to my stomach. Every night I would pray that the cases would decrease so that we could return to normal life. This pandemic is simply the most mind-racking experience of my life. I learned to appreciate life. Even though we are technically still in a pandemic, the cases are dropping and businesses are slowly opening. I just hope that we can soon resume life without masks and worry.