Denial is a river in Texas – Digby's Hullabaloo

Nurse Jodi Doering’s tweet thread from Saturday about COVID patients in denial went viral and landed her network interviews.

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred,” she told CNN on Monday.

A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be… Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.” pic.twitter.com/tgUgP6znAT
— CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt (@CNNThisMorning) November 16, 2020

Doering has company along the Rio Grande in Texas:

On my last shift I had a very eye opening experience. El Paso was in the middle of its hardest hit time with covid hospitalizations and cases. I was working in covid ICU and at the time checking finger stick blood glucose levels on the entire unit, about 25 patients 2/
— Nurse Ashley 💁🏼‍♀️✨ (@TheBlondeRN) November 16, 2020

He mentions hating “fake news”. He says, “I don’t think covids is really more than a flu.“ I clarified, “Now you think differently though?”

He replies, “No the same. I should just take vitamins for my immune system. They (news) are making it a big deal.”

I’m shocked. 4/
— Nurse Ashley 💁🏼‍♀️✨ (@TheBlondeRN) November 16, 2020

Typically as a nurse we usually put on a face. We don’t tell our patients another patient just died. We don’t tell them what we just saw. We walk in to care for that patient as they are. We give them our full unbiased care.

I make a choice. Something I’ve never done. I say, 6/
— Nurse Ashley 💁🏼‍♀️✨ (@TheBlondeRN) November 16, 2020

“Really?” He asks if a lot of people have died.

I’m brutally honest. I tell him in 10 years of being a nurse I’ve done more CPR and seen more people die in the last 2 weeks than I have in my entire career combined. 8/
— Nurse Ashley 💁🏼‍♀️✨ (@TheBlondeRN) November 16, 2020

A few hours later I had the opportunity to transfer him in a wheelchair to a lower level of care, a medical COVID floor. He sees the other patients in the ICU as we are leaving. We arrive to to the floor and I’m waiting to give report to the nurse 10/
— Nurse Ashley 💁🏼‍♀️✨ (@TheBlondeRN) November 16, 2020

I thanked him and I told him I hope he has a complete recovery. I hope he can heal.

“I will tell everyone that denies how bad this is about my experiences,” he says.

I will too, Sir. I will too.

/end
— Nurse Ashley 💁🏼‍♀️✨ (@TheBlondeRN) November 16, 2020

UPDATE: Here’s another one.

"I have seen so many emergent intubations. I've seen people more sick than I've ever seen in my life." COVID ICU nurse Lacie Gooch hopes you will listen. @UNMC_ID @unmc @Prof_Lowe @DanielWJohnson9 @KellyCawcuttMD @JamesLawler11 pic.twitter.com/Sclrap3vlQ
— Nebraska Medicine (@NebraskaMed) November 17, 2020