Page 216 - Unity Health Toronto - Digital Yearbook 2021
P. 216
KAREN MICHELSEN Favourite Memory
The first memorable moment was the day I was hired since it was my
Start Date: January 26, 1986 birthday. Other memorable memories were during pandemics. My first
one was SARS and now Covid.
During SARS, people did not want to associate with you if they knew you
worked in the hospital. Wearing a N95 mask all the time was a challenge.
We learned how to wear the isolation gear that looked like space suits. I
remember assisting a physician put in a chest tube on a prone patient
when the backup generator failed during a power failure. The patient
arrested. The patient survived even though we worked in the dark to
unprone the patient to resuscitate them.
The first day in the Covid unit, on my way to work I did not see anyone in
the streets, the cars were only parked on the roads and I did not see
anybody outside SMH. The first people I saw were the screeners. There
was no one in the locker room. I was thinking at the time am I really late
for work? When I got onto the unit it was so packed with people along
with at least more than half a dozen IV pumps outside every patient room.
Most of the patients were proned.
Many of us thought it would be a year before things would start to get back
to normal. At that time we were given a wellness gift by the hospital. A
sign I thought things were going to get worse. Little did we know a year
later we would be experiencing a third wave that was worse than the first
wave a year earlier. Now we had to be prepared to look after two patients
in a room where there would normally be one.
I did take full advantage of the discounts up to 50% offered to healthcare
workers from North Face, Helly Hansen and Lululemon. I applied for some
of the sporting events but did not get any tickets. It certainly has been a
memorable period of time with its highs and lows and still not knowing
when it will end.
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