It’s gonna be ok

If you didn’t know, I’m a nurse. While I currently work in education, I frequent the hospital, like every day. I go around on the floors. I talk to nurse and an occasional patient.

I’ve been asked a ton of times in the last weeks, “how scared should we be”? My answer is usually: Do you wash your hands?

Here’s the thing. You’re asking the wrong people. We don’t have the luxury of being scared. While everyone else is in quarantine, my friends will be taking care of the people with the virus. If we’re scared, we can’t do our jobs.

So people are getting offended that some are making a joke about it. Listen…we make a joke out of everything. It’s how you cope with the real terrible things we see. It’s how you give your everything and work and then come home to your people.

We don’t tend to run from contagions. We don’t love them. The hospital is already overrun and overworked, but we’re not going to run. Nurses will never be told to work from home.

So stop asking if we’re scared. We’re not. Also you’re not gonna like our answers if you’re scared. We’ll keep doing our jobs and taking care of the people.

If you’re in a group that makes you high risk, you should be cautious, but don’t operate scared. What good is being scared going to do for you? Do you need to quarantine? Do it. Do you need to do normal life as much as possible? Do that.

Wash your hands. If you’re sick stay home. And for goodness sake, quit buying toilet paper.

I, personally, am out of bandwidth to be worried about any new things, which might seem strange. I’m not worried. I just simply don’t have any more neurons to devote to worry at this time.

He has not given us a spirit of fear!