My Daughter Is On The Front Line As A Nurse

Whenever I think of my daughter on the front line of the NHS doing her job as a nurse, which I may add, she trained and work so hard to be, it’s a very bittersweet thought. The one thought is about my pride in her. It’s beyond measure that she is putting herself in danger on every shift she does and most likely without all the necessary protective gear that all nurses and doctors should have.

My other thought is quite simply worry to the point that it can become an all consuming thought. That my coronavirus anxiety will move into overdrive. Every shift she does is another shift that she will be in danger of contracting Covid-19. Yes she is young and healthy, but if I’m totally honest that’s absolutely no comfort and quite simply doesn’t take away the worry and fear of her wellbeing.

Like us all being in lock-down we all have had plenty of time to think about many things and possibly take a step back from our lives and have a moment of surveillance about what is important in life and more importantly how we live our lives.

One thing in particular that I have given a lot of thought too is my children and how this very unprecedented time will affect their mental health in the future and how quickly will they will be able to able to get back to life before Covid-19. It will without doubt be a long road and it will be like taking baby steps as we venture back into the outside world.

Out of all of my children my daughter who is a nurse is the one I fear for the most for. Yes, she is a professionally trained nurse and she has been trained to deal with death which obviously is something she has already dealt with in her job as a nurse, but all the training in the world will not have prepared her to see people dying on such a vast scale. It’s a war zone but without weapons and of course no nurse or doctor signed up for that. Caring for a massive amount of human life that is desperately unwell and lots of them not recovering and this is happening in such a small space of time. My fears for my daughter is the possible long term effects it will have on her mental wellbeing and health. My question to myself is will this experience change her as a person forever?

My daughter is nearly 23 years old and in just under two years after qualifying as a nurse from university, she is plunged into a world that any generation currently living will never have seen before. I don’t pretend to even begin to visualise what it would be like to walk up and down a covid-19 ward with people hooked up to oxygen, ventilators and even worse drawing their last breath on their own without any family there to hold their hand, just a nurse or a doctor to help them in their last moments. The pressure that the NHS workers are under is beyond compare to anything I have ever known or will ever know. It must be so emotionally draining, but somehow they will to stay focussed to do their job, which is saving lives, this is completely beyond my comprehension.

My daughter is an inspiration to me and she will, I hope, come out of this in one piece as I hope all the NHS staff do. As a nation we will be forever in debt to nurses and doctors that are putting their lives on the line every time they do a shift.

So remember when you stay home you will save lives and will make the job of the nurses and doctors on the frontline just a little bit easier by not spreading this disease and pushing our NHS over the top so they’re unable to cope.

My darling daughter, I love you and I’m so incredibly proud of you. Make sure you stay safe. Because no matter how old you are you will always be my baby girl.