I cannot stress this enough for anyone who lives in Austin (although this really applies to pretty much everywhere at this point)
BE SAFE.
What this means is don't get on your motorcycles. Don't go out on your ATV. Don't get on your jetskis. Don't ride the little mini scooters. Don't get super wasted. Don't do dangerous drugs. Basically don't engage in reckless, dangerous, and stupid behavior. The level 1 trauma center for central Texas has no trauma beds for you right now, because we admitted a man who fell like 60ft (on purpose) at 4:00am this morning and he took up the last one because, in a real bummer for him, he survived the fall. Of course, one or two beds might open up, but maybe we should save those for someone who has a stroke or something, mmkay? Watch Ted Lasso, fuck your partner, smoke some pot, stay indoors.
I was off of work for five days. I worked last night. The night before I had a girls' night with some friends who are also ICU nurses in Austin, and they warned me that things had really taken a turn since I left last on Saturday morning. And they were right. There is palpable despair in our ICUs, and especially in our MICU, which is our COVID ICU. Don't get me wrong, watching people die always sucks, and it was really shitty watching so many already-sick and elderly patients die with COVID last summer/winter, but the patients that we get up there now are younger, healthier, but they crash just the same.
ALL INTUBATED PATIENTS IN OUR COVID ICU ARE UNVACCINATED
And Delta makes it harder for us to get you off the vent. The things we learned over last year don't seem to work quite as well. So then you get the trach, the PEG, and if you don't die before then, your body basically just kind of starts to rot. I can go into much more detail if you're into that sort of thing. Just DM me.
So get vaccinated. It will almost certainly keep that terrible stuff from happening, unless you are just a really unlucky son of a bitch. And it will really help your community's healthcare workers out. You are lucky we haven't all walked away from the job at this point. Shit is fucked.
(I was directly exposed to COVID because of the aforementioned jumper patient. We didn't get his test results back until after admitting him to the ICU, and his vent circuit broke right in front of my face. So I've got that going for me)