Louise Curtis - A Nurse's Story

By this time, I’d been in PPE for seven and a half hours with no drink or toilet break. I was painfully aware that I needed to stop doing this. I escaped for a break and knew that in just a couple of hours I would be able to leave work behind me, or at least try, and embark on my annual leave. I was meant to have gone to a festival in the Netherlands with my husband. Not only was that cancelled, but the weather had taken a turn for the worse. Gone was the glorious sunshine. Instead, the forecast said we were in for a week of showers. At least I’d be able to crack on with my dissertation and start Game of Thrones .

I woke up the next morning and felt relief that I wouldn’t be going into hospital for another week. Ed had time off too and we decided to go slightly further afield when walking the dogs. On one day trip to the coast we even saw some blue skies. More often than not, though, we were kitted out in full waterproofs and walked through the rain while getting increasingly hot and sweaty. It wasn’t far away from the feeling of wearing PPE but we still returned home wet and muddy.

The weather was unrelenting and I couldn’t help but feel I was missing out because this was not the holiday I had planned. I caught up with friends – at a distance – and even met one by the river, where we sat drinking cans of gin and tonic in pouring rain. Thankfully the forecast for Saturday, the day set aside for my family reunion, looked promising.

Seeing my mum and sister for the first time since my father’s funeral in February was lovely and emotional all at the same time. Mum looked like she’d lost weight. I wanted to give them both a hug, but didn’t. I also wanted to go and spend time with them at the house where I had grown up and still call home. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to do that either so a picnic in a woodland area halfway between where we both lived had to suffice.

The sun came out and we went on a walk through the trees. It wasn’t long until, for some light relief, we found a way to segue into stories of my sister’s eccentricities. Mum had started to flag just before the end of the walk and discussion turned to my sister’s strops when she felt she had walked too far and didn’t want to go on any longer.

The first time she met one of my brothers-in-law, we did Parkrun, which she did not enjoy, before going on a walk that he had chosen. She thought it was going to be a gentle stroll for a couple of hours at most, and that black skinny jeans and a pair of flimsy trainers would therefore be appropriate. Four hours after we started walking, we were in the middle of nowhere with no signs of civilization in sight. We had hiked up steep hills, climbed over rocks, leapt over streams and clambered over undulating landscape.

My sister had reached her limit and things weren’t helped when every time she asked how long was left, she was told the same amount of time. She threw the most almighty strop. To be honest, I was feeling the same but she has always been more forthright and vocal with her opinions.

‘I don’t mind doing long walks, but you should have told me before so I could mentally prepare!’ she yelled in frustration. ‘You have to manage my expectations!’

She hadn’t brought any water or snacks and I didn’t have any to appease her either. We ended up walking at least ten miles that day before we sat down in a pub.

‘I’m not walking any more,’ she announced.

‘Errr, the car’s not here,’ I replied.

‘I don’t care! I’m not moving.’

Ed ended up running to get the car to bring it to her.

After re-telling this story, we moved on to the time the three of us met up at Glastonbury. It was my sister’s first time at the festival and she and my husband set about demolishing a bottle of gin. It tipped it down so hard with rain that the main stage closed. We remained in the middle of a field sheltering under an umbrella. When the deluge eased, the music started again and Ed fell asleep on a stranger’s shoulder while my sister wailed; the gin had got to her. We were camping in neighbouring fields so when it came to making our way back to our tents, Ed kept falling asleep on his feet but somehow seemed to know exactly where he was going. Meanwhile, the enormous amount of mud got the better of my sister and she threw another strop. After slipping for the umpteenth time, she stood still where she was and cried out: ‘I can’t do this anymore! I’m tired, my feet hurt so much. This is NOT enjoyable.’ I stood there laughing at her standing deep in mud, while Ed went to give her a helping hand.

‘I’m glad I wasn’t there,’ said my mother.

After a week off, I should have felt refreshed, energized and eager to return to work. I didn’t. Normally when Ed and I have time off, we spend it far from home doing exciting activities or exploring new places. I felt like I hadn’t had a great time and that it had gone by too quickly. I didn’t feel rested either because I still hadn’t been sleeping well. My dreams had got worse and were now filled with images of past patients.

I saw the faces of some of the really sick people I’d treated who had died. They’d been on their way out of this world for a while and their skin was white and waxy, sometimes with a yellow tinge. Their faces were really drawn with a sunken mouth and eyes. If it was an old person and they didn’t have any dentures in, there was no shape to the bottom of their mouth so it gaped open.

Occasionally, I was haunted by the patient who had died from a gastrointestinal bleed, hosing out blood from every orifice, but more often than not it was the face of someone who was dying slowly that invaded my subconscious over and over again.

Whenever I meet someone and tell them what I do for a living, one of the first questions they always ask is: ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?’ I get it from hairdressers, the in-laws, friends of friends, my husband’s work colleagues on a night out and loads more people. The conversation usually starts with: ‘I bet you’ve seen some things.’ Silence follows while I work out what to say. I think about how long I have to engage with this person. Will it be a brief encounter or will I be stuck with them for a few hours or more? If it’s the latter, I might tell them a gory story – like the teenager who got impaled by a fence but was ultimately fine because their injuries were quite an easy thing for us to deal with. People want drama and a happy ending. No one wants to hear about the young man who was out on his motorbike and crashed, killing his friend who was riding on the back without a helmet on, or the baby who was mauled to death by a dog. Those types of stories are conversation stoppers. I made the mistake once of opening up about what I’d seen to someone I’d just met. They went quiet. ‘Oh God,’ they said and that was it.

‘That’s my job! That’s what I do,’ I replied jokily after the silence became too awkward to bear.

Would conversations now start with: ‘What was it like working through the pandemic?’ It was already beginning to happen. In a shop in town the woman behind the counter asked, ‘How has it been?’

It’s funny because sometimes I’ll come home and tell Ed about a dramatic episode at work and he’ll exaggerate it and go and tell his colleagues over lunch and get a huge reaction. He’ll never mention how I had to hold an old lady’s hand while she died because she was on her own, though, or the person who killed themselves. Those stories are too sad for office chat and yet they are the cases that hit me the hardest.

I’d had one dream in particular a couple of times. I saw my dad on the floor against the chair where he died. I wasn’t there when he passed away but Mum had told us the details and I could picture it clearly because I’ve been in A&E when someone’s died after vomiting blood. In my dream, I could see the blood, it was congealed – and I could smell it. It was like I was stood over Dad unable to do anything. Once, I woke up halfway through the dream with tears running down my cheeks. My husband had also woken up and said I’d been whimpering and sounded like one of the dogs.