As an X-Ray Tech, I come face to face with COVID daily. I mean that in the most literal sense.
We in the medical field are staring this pandemic in the eye on a daily basis. We put aside our fears, panic and our worries because if we freeze, if we give in to the panic others will pay the price. We see the patients on ventilators every day. We watch over them as they lay in hospital beds with tubes down their throats fighting for their lives.
There is too much going on to let myself feel everything.
We go home to our families and struggle not to let our loved one see the very real toll of all of the things we see and deal with on our faces. We comfort them and ease their fears as they worry for us, even though we ourselves need to be comforted. We feel terror and outrage when we look at the news and see people protesting against masks and social distancing. We know that they, and even the people closest to them, may be the next people we see in our care. We have to chase away the thoughts of ourselves being infected as we hear that we have to reuse personal protective equipment because of shortages.
There is too much going on to let myself feel everything.
I am one of the first five people you will see when you are unlucky enough to have to go to the hospital. From the emergency room to the ICU, patient floors and even the operating room, X-Ray Techs are there. On an average shift pre-COVID-19 an x-ray department in a hospital can perform anywhere from 90 to 150 exams, not including cat scan, M.R.I. and ultrasound. Our jobs take us into patient rooms for portable exams; patients come to our department for x-rays and fluoro exams. We go into surgery to take x-rays while patients are under the knife. Radiology techs are the eyes of medicine.
As the image comes up on my screen feel the gut punch of seeing cloudy lungs associated with COVID positive x-rays and realize that I have just been exposed.
As an X-Ray Tech, I come face to face with COVID daily. When doing portable chest exams I must go to patient rooms, lift the patient to place my x-ray film behind their torso, and position them to make sure all the relevant anatomy is in the x-ray, placing my face within inches of the patient’s face.
Several times I have been called to patient rooms with no indication on the order that the patient potentially has COVID, only to take the picture and as the image comes up on my screen feel the gut punch of seeing cloudy lungs associated with COVID positive x-rays and the reality that I have just been exposed.
My biggest fear is not that I could contract COVID but that without knowing I could be a carrier and spread COVID to others.
The problem is that often exams are ordered while a patient is in triage before they ever see a doctor. So if a person comes in for stomach pain and lists that as their main concern, all I see is the chief complaint. I have begun to treat all Emergency Department patients as COVID positive. But with P.P.E. shortages, I am given one n95 mask that I have to use for no less than 5 patient encounters. Pre-COVID that was a one-time use mask.
My biggest fear is not that I could contract COVID (I’m young and healthy, my chances are good) but that without knowing I could be a carrier and spread COVID to others because not only do I work in hospitals, I also have shifts in clinics that treat elderly and post-transplant patients, the most vulnerable.
I am writing this not to simply complain but to show my perspective in the hopes of creating awareness and a dialog that can better help to address the ever-growing dangers in our medical community and begin the work of making it work better for both healthcare workers and patients.