From the Other Side of the Bed: A Trauma Nurse's Personal and Family's Perspective during His Fight for Life While Being Infected with COVID

By Frank Mitchell

For the first time in my life, I had to fight for it. COVID attacked me, my family, and the world. Being a trauma nurse in the emergency department, I often find myself (as do all of my coworkers) meeting people on the worst day of their lives. Now for the first time, I started meeting people during the worst time of mine.

This book is written to illustrate how we should be able to fight the devastating effects of this virus together. There is an army that is available to everyone, and every single person can become part of the army that everyone needs in their life. We can focus this army to support one another, or to tear us apart because someone thinks differently than we do. This is an age-old problem that continues to face us today, something I call self-righteous indignation. It continues to tear apart our friends, families, and even countries. We need each other’s strengths, not each other’s opinions.

There is a person in that medical bed—someone with family, friends, and a health care team. They need us. They need support. But so do those who are on the outside looking in. I hope this book offers a glimpse into what it was like to be a caregiver who found himself changing from bedside care to needing care from the other side of the bed and to see how that need extended into my family and friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662483523

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From the Other Side of the Bed

A Trauma Nurse's Personal and Family's Perspective during His Fight for Life While Being Infected with COVID

Frank Mitchell

Copyright © 2022 Frank Mitchell

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8345-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8352-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Preface

Who am I? Not just a question that you are wanting to know, but a question that I have been asking myself as I prepared to write this book. Who am I? Why would someone want to read about my story? Well, this is a book that was encouraged by fellow healthcare workers, friends, and family following my own personal fight for life with COVID.

I am a trauma nurse working at a level 1 trauma center. This story is about working the front lines during the COVID pandemic of 2020. I take pride in being a team member of those blessed with the burden of meeting people on the worst day of their lives at their bedside. But in September of 2020, I became a person who needed to need someone on the worst day of my life to be at my bedside. Despite taking precautions, I became infected with the COVID virus, and it nearly took my life. The purpose of this book is to show how I discovered that I did not just need a person to meet me at that time but more so how I needed and received an army of people who helped me through the long recovery process, not just the physical, or mental, but the spiritual recovery as well. And boy did I receive an army of support. They didn’t all come at once; some trickled in one at a time. But they were all welcomed and desperately needed.

In my motivational discussions with fellow healthcare workers, I really focus on letting them know that everything they did with me, no matter how little, or insignificant it felt like to them, it means everything to me. So if you are reading this book as a healthcare worker, a believer in God, or any person really, never underestimate the impact you have on others. You may have been a member of an army that helps the broken, sick, or lost, without even knowing it.

A huge part of my recovery is my wife. She was thrust into a role that neither she nor I ever expected. This book will show not only what I experienced from the other side of the bed, but what she experienced while watching me being on the other side of the bed, in bedside care.

Also know that before this adventure, I had a strong belief in the power of God, family, and friends, but now, my faith in God, and my appreciation in friends, family, and what turns out to be strangers, has magnified tremendously.

Now I know this won’t be a long read, as for a lot of it I was incapacitated, sleeping, or disoriented. But hopefully it will provide you with some perspective on how we on the caregiving side of the bed are people, just like our patients are, and we all go through situations where we need someone, even just to sit with. So enjoy this book, but please use its contents to motivate you to become part of the army that someone truly needs!

Chapter 1

Just Another Day

September 9, 2020. A beautiful day. A day where I was enjoying a day where I was home and was not scheduled to be in the emergency department. I am a trauma nurse working at a level 1 trauma center in an urban setting. I have been a nurse since 2006 and in that time, I have worked in the medical intensive care and emergency departments, on medical missions, and have also trained other nurses on various medical equipment during my time as a nurse. So days home with my family, as in other professions, is a valued treasure to me.

I remember the weather being a stunning, warm, crisp, clear day, with a wonderful blue sky. So much so that I even took time to mow the grass. I have seasonal allergies, nothing intense, just an annoying sneeze and an itchy nose during ragweed season. I remember coming inside and having my normal sneezing fit, for a minute or so. One was particularly strong, where I thought I strained my back with the sneeze (getting older sucks). I didn’t pay any attention to it though. Just sat down to rest. As a matter of fact, we as a family had a great home-cooked dinner, followed by a fun movie night with my family.

Later, about two in the morning or so, I awoke feeling nauseated. Something that does not happen to me much at all. I quickly snuck out of the room, trying not to wake my wife, or family. Nausea quickly turned to you better get to the toilet also known by some partiers as the porcelain god. I went to the basement, where I hoped I would not wake anyone up. Well, apparently I must have swallowed a monster, as that would be the only way I can describe the sounds my body started to make. I puked so much, and with such violence, that I was waiting for my shoes to come out of my mouth.

Now after emptying my body of what felt like everything I ate over the last week or so, my back really began to hurt, near my left side, near the lowest rib. Being the good emergency department nurse, I started to triage myself—nausea, vomiting, back pain, and not being able to find a comfortable position at all, I found myself doing what we like to call the kidney stone dance. But I have never had one before. I woke up my wife, Rachel, and asked her to drive me to the emergency department (ED) as the pain was becoming unbearable. I arrived in tears from the pain (again not something I am accustomed to), the ED nurses at this nearby hospital also noted the dance and brought me in back preparing me for a non-contrast CT scan. They put an IV in my arm and gave me Dilaudid. For those non-medical people reading this book, we call this morphine’s bigger brother or one of our vitamin Ds.

With regards to the non-contrast CT, the importance of not injecting contrast into my body for the CT scan is the contrast would hide any kidney stones that may be in my system. The stone and contrast show up on the CT scans as white in color which would mask the location of the stone if one was there.

Well…no stone was found, and no blood in the urine was seen by the lab either. And now, I was Dilaudided out of caring. My pain was hidden by the medication, and they sent me home with a we don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t a kidney stone, and your pain is better, there is no infection seen either, so we don’t need to admit you to the hospital. Just come back if the pain returns or gets worse. So I went home. I believe I was discharged with a prescription for a muscle relaxer as well, just in case.

I returned home and returned to sleep. Not much later, another painful sensation awoke me. This one was completely different. It was in my upper left abdomen, just below the rib cage, and was even more painful. My first thought was another pulled muscle showing its presence now that the Dilaudid wore off. But this was really bad. So much so I was doubled over in pain, and not by choice. My body said, "You will double over now," and so I did. I woke