Originally posted in a fairly long thread on twitter.
No idea how long this thread will go. But I want you to understand how fucking serious I treat all of this, because I just had a PTSD episode all because of a sound on a newscast.In the middle of the worst of the pandemic, I had to be hospitalized. I had developed a bad cough, which happens to me from time to time thanks to something called chronic cough syndrome, but the symptoms were unusually bad and #COVID19-like. Off to the hospital. Good news - I didn't have Covid. Bad news, I required a few days in hospital.
Just the wait for a bed was unbelievable. 13 hours. I had to wait for someone to die so that I could be admitted. Not just did a person have to die, but rooms disinfected and patients moved. Despite the fact that I wasn't in the "COVID Ward" I got to see the effects first-hand.
The newly disinfected bed and room I had was previously occupied by someone moved up to the Covid Ward. They in turn had moved up there after a ventilator was taken away from a patient who died. Staff rotated through different wards on different shifts. My first nurse was rotated into the Covid Ward. My next day nurse had just rotated out. I have never in my life seen a group of people look so haunted by their day to day lives.
A well-liked member of their staff was on a ventilator. So was a priest who worked in the hospital.
I had never seen in person a "Code Blue". There were six of them my first day. There is also a "Code Black". It's much worse.
My wife and daughters weren't allowed to visit me. When your daily soundtrack is nothing but medical staff talking about the good and the bad, terrible television and the moaning/screaming of your new neighbors getting that visit from family is a huge stress relief. It wasn't available this time. I didn't see my family again until I was discharged. There was no outside world. One more thing…
A sound you hear all the time not just in your room but coming from every room at unpredictable times is this high-pitched and very loud BEEPING sound, signifying that an IV needs to be changed. It happened in my room and everyone else's. You get used to it as part of the soundtrack.
I was lucky and only spent 4 days in hospital. I've had longer stays because of this. But holy crap this was the worst experience I've ever had, because much of the noise surrounding me was despair and death. Like I said above, the staff was shaken up.
But I went home. I got better. I got vaccinated, as did my wife and my children. I have spent every single day since then pleading, cajoling, insulting and singing about the virtues of getting vaccinated.
This has fallen upon purposely deaf ears, which I don't understand.
This evening on The Rachel Maddow Show was a lengthy story about how dire the situation has become in Mississippi. During a news clip a nurse was talking and suddenly there was that BEEP - the signal that an IV needs changing, right there in the COVID Ward.
Staff got in motion while the interview went on. The BEEPING went on. And all of a sudden in my mind I was back in the hospital, hearing that BEEPING and the sounds of death all around me. It was horrible. My wife turned off the sound on the TV and I was okay in a few minutes.
But I'm not Okay. I had no fucking clue that a simple sound could do this to me.
It just happened.
We're not okay. We've let so many people die needlessly that this is going to leave a massive wound in our nation, and we're probably never going to address it.
We never got around to dealing with the scars of 9/11, so why should we expect that we're going to deal with this? We are going to be a nation with PTSD. A world with PTSD. Not just me.
Now I admit I've been thinking about this topic a lot today, but to have a sound trigger me like that, on a story I already knew, startled me.
This is going to affect a lot of people much more deeply than it did me just now. People are going to die of PTSD.
If you think I'm being alarmist consider this: In the two big wars this century we've lost about 5,000 people. A greater number of active duty solders have committed suicide since 9/11.
4 people died in the Insurrection of 1/6/21. Since that day, 6 police officers have committed suicide.
The Pandemic has killed over 600,000 people. The death toll is going to get much bigger, and it's not just COVID that's going to do it. We are scarring ourselves to death.
And this is so avoidable.
Fuck politics. Fuck freedom. Be a responsible person for once in your motherfucking life. Wear a mask. Get vaccinated. Freedom comes with OBLIGATIONS and DUTY. To EVERYONE.
I'm trying to save your motherfucking life you stupid son of a bitch.
Because even those of us who will survive (again, I'm vaccinated) will be damaged by your death.