At a loss for words

Slow motion..... For the first time in over a year of posting about COVID-19, I am at a loss for words. As I was driving home from work tonight, trying to calm myself down after a weary week and after hearing today's news about this third wave starting at a Zoom meeting this morning with all the family doctors in Guelph and the COVID-19 team leaders, this phrase started to come to mind, repeatedly. 'Slow motion' Slow things down. Stop the racing heart, the anxious thoughts. Stand still and just....be. 'Slow motion' I like to think that these words of wisdom that seem to download into my brain out of no where right when I need them the most are from God. That brings me comfort. Nurses and physicians are trained to slow their emotions down while facing extremely stressful situations. We put ourselves into an automatic response state. It's a state that has been drilled into us by years of training, years of running arrests, treating critically ill patients, pushing through emergency room shifts, delivering babies.... For me, the medical situation that triggered the most stress and required the most focused and levelled response was treating critically ill, HIV positive children in Lesotho; far away from the support of an intact healthcare system. Every night, in this rural district of Lesotho, the team of Canadian doctors, nurses and nurse practitioners would make their way home from the hospital, often walking in silence, shoulder to shoulder, deep in thought. Each night, recovery from the days trauma would begin with this walk home. We'd often share a meal and a bottle of wine. Russel was the HIV clinic administrator. He would often raise a glass and say these words, " Godspeed to those we have lost and healing to those we are about to save". Debriefing is what they called it; a time to discuss the ups and downs of the day sharing our deepest fears, regrets and anxieties while opening our hearts and souls to one another. There was always regret because no matter how hard we worked we just could not save everyone. But, we learned the value of celebrating the successes no matter how hard won they were or how tiny they seemed in the face of the catastrophic effects of the AIDS pandemic. And in this intimate process of debriefing, we found the beginning of healing. And here we are, as an entire country, 37 million of us facing our own pandemic with an intact yet now precarious healthcare system. None of us have been spared. Not a single soul. How can it possible get worse a year later? Where will we find the strength, resolve and hope to keep going? How can this be? Well, this is what pandemics do. They peak at just the time when we are all exhausted, hopeless and distraught. They bring chaos and confusion. They make us dig deep to find a way to face, head on, circumstances we never dreamed we could survive. They pull us together in ways we never thought possible and they make us appreciate the small things, the beautiful things, the minor wins and the miracles that drive us to tears. Most of all, they make us develop a new perspective on our own individual lives and on what hardship really is. Slow motion. Slow things down. Think clearly. Focus. Rise above the fear and look towards the goal. Step away from the pounding, incessant noise from the news and a thousand clamouring, negative voices. Slow. Silence. Healing will begin. Years of training teaches healthcare professional how to block out the distractions and focus on what needs to be down now, in this moment. We have had a year of training in COVID-19. We know how to do this. We know how to do this together, shoulder to shoulder (metaphorically speaking of course), following the same rules focusing on the same outcomes: the end of this most dangerous third wave, the vaccination of > 70% of the population and the slow return to a normal life. Almost 5,000 cases in Ontario today and ICU's filling up beyond what any health care team has ever seen? Yes. Patients that are younger and sicker? Yes. Variants that spread so much more rapidly and cause more serious disease? Yes. This is what pandemics will do. But, 105,000 vaccines were given yesterday in Ontario. Twenty-seven and a halt percent ( 27.5%) of Ontarions have received at least one dose. Source: https://howsmyflattening.ca/#/home We are vaccinating more than 1 percent of the population a day which will bring us to 40 % vaccinated by the end of April and 60 % vaccinated by the middle of May. And that's when we start to win. In every other country that reached this level of vaccination in a third wave, the number of new cases came crashing down. Will the vaccines arrive? YES. Are we wasting millions of doses that are just sitting in freezers unused? Nonsense. If a million doses are not held in storage the vaccines we need for the next four weeks of booked appointments in mass vaccination clinics would not be available. Toronto is not running out of vaccine. Toronto re-distributed it's vaccines away from vaccine clinics to hotspots where they were desperately needed. Leave those hotspots on fire and everyone gets engulfed. Hold on. We've still got this. Wear that three layer mask. It is more important than ever with these variants. A layer of polypropylene should be in your cloth mask. This keeps the variants out if the mask covers your face from ear to ear and the top of your nose to under your chin. hidesinhands.com Stay six feet apart. Avoid all indoor and outdoor gathering. Bush parties and house parties become super-spreader events that will push our hospitals past their point of capacity. Wear a mask outside where people may pass in close proximity. Hunker down. More restrictions may be coming. We are strong enough to do this. There is no doubt. Anne-Marie Please share. For non-Facebook users, you can find this post here: https://braceletofhope.blogspot.com/ And if you'd like to help Bracelet of Hope work towards making sure that Lesotho has access to these vaccines, donate here: https://www.braceletofhope.ca/ways-to-