Moral Injury

Thoughts a year after a weekend retreat billed as "Healing our Healthcare Heroes: Moral Injury"

How much time is enough? For boiled blood to cool? For an inflamed mind to recompose? For righteous indignation to garner validation? Nearing the end of 2023 I hope I can look back with some perspective on what has happened. The enormity of the experience is on a scale that makes it difficult to fathom. It is like trying to see a large mural with your face pressed up against the wall, but worse. The mural is incomplete in many places, purposely unfinished, whited out in others. Important sections are covered over by tarps with counterfeit images painted on them and these are only pulled back for a select few to see what’s underneath. You will not have seen the same mural as me, nor I as my brother. Can I make sense of any of it? That is a starting point I often go to. How can I understand my lived experience within the context of Covid-19? (whatever it was)

Who am I and what is unique or interesting about my life from 2020 through now? I am a nurse with a quarter century’s experience in the ER. I am a husband whose wife is self employed in a branch of alternative health care. I am the father of three children ranging in age from 11 to 23 years old. I am an occasional writer. No. I am a writer who is occasionally active as such. I am a health freedom advocate and hardline supporter of the principal of Informed Consent as the ethical foundation of medical decision making. I am a former registered Democrat who left that dumpster-fire (of a party) in 2015 after the Democrats betrayed the children of California with their brazen passage of SB277, legislation in our state that removed the Religious and Philosophical exemptions to childhood vaccines as a pre-condition to attending school. Thousands of parents lined up in Sacramento and spoke out against the bill. Their concerns were ignored. By the Democrats. More rights trampling followed with the Democrats whoring themselves out to Big Pharma and the medical exemption was also effectively eliminated leaving California’s children with no recourse to vaccine mandates just so they con go to school. Never mind that the public schools are turning their minds to pulp. That is a discussion for another day.

During 2020 when we were told we were facing a worldwide pandemic of a novel virus that was killing lots of people, we were shown repeated images of people dropping dead as they stood on the street, at the railway station, in businesses and restaurants in China. We were shown how the Chinese government was boarding people inside their homes, driving trucks down streets spraying a dense fog of who knows what. We saw imposition of phone tracking apps. We were told not to venture more than 5 miles from home, and even within that tiny circumscription we had to have a reason of necessity to be out at all. We were kept from recreating in the open fresh air. Beach goers and surfers were ticketed. Moms with toddlers were roughly arrested in front of their small children. Open space parks were closed. The nets were taken down off public basketball courts. We were told we had to wear (ineffectual) cloth and paper masks, and stay 6 feet away from each other. We were encouraged to snitch on our neighbors if we observed they were not in total compliance. My 8 year old daughter and I were yelled at by a maniac who called us, “Stupid fucking idiots” for being out unmasked on a multi use trail, even though we deferentially moved far off the trail so he could pass, wearing his mask all alone in the great outdoors.

We were told not to gather for holidays… not to get together with family. We were told we couldn’t go to church. We couldn’t sing or laugh in the presence of others. We could not shake hands, not touch, not kiss or even embrace the people we love. According to some arbitrary set of dictates some businesses were closed while others were allowed to continue operations. Our governor in California went on a power drunk frenzy barfing out edicts constraining our constitutionally guaranteed and God given rights. But he did not follow his own orders and was many times photographed in a state of non-compliance. (This stooge has presidential aspirations too. And Californians may be torpid enough to vote for him)

In March 2020 hospitals were told they had to cancel elective surgeries and procedures. My brother was scheduled for a Lumbar spinal surgery March 16th. I had gone to his pre-op appointment with the surgeon and was going to spend the night with him the night before his surgery and take him to the hospital on the 16th. That didn’t happen. Even though the pain in his back and weakness in his leg were rapidly getting worse his surgery was postponed without a new timetable set. His doctor told him that the delay could cause permanent injury. Even so the surgery was considered elective. It was not life or death. But it could prevent permanent disability. That is just one story of the way medical treatment was unreasonably withheld. One of many I witnessed first hand as an RN. This one was close to home.

He did have his surgery months later. I was not allowed to go into the hospital to comfort and support him. No-one was. He still complains about how isolated he felt. Facing a risky spinal surgery by himself and waking up afterward all alone was painful for him. It didn’t have to be that way.

All through 2020 we only saw a few isolated cases of Covid-19 in our hospital. Early on I had a dread that the response to the virus was wildly disproportionate to the actual danger from the disease. When the first limits on gathering were announced, the ones telling people they had to keep congregants to less than 50 in a group I was worried and even started losing sleep. I would wake up agitated with the thought that the first amendment guarantees Americans the right to peaceably assemble. Just what was going on here? Then the number was cut to ten. Then we were not supposed to interact one on one. A voice in my head was screaming, “We are being played!”. The words would frequently escape my lips when people would ask me my opinion of the pandemic.

We weren’t seeing Covid cases in any kind of numbers. In fact, I had never seen it so slow, so empty in the Emergency Department in my over twenty years as a nurse. Kind hearted people in the community were sending us cookies, cakes, cards, hand crafted knick knacks, pizzas, donuts, you name it. Classes of school children brought us home made treats. Strangers and friends alike would thank me for my service. There was clearly a sense amongst the community that we were doing something extraordinary and epic, bravely manning the front lines. I got the sense folks thought I was risking my life. For me it never felt that way.

Bizarrely people took to standing at their doors or open windows and banging on pots and pans and clapping at the same time every evening. The idea was that this unorthodox salute was meant to show appreciation for doctors and nurses, but also to show a societal cohesion… to show that together we could get through this. Boy if that didn’t make me want to shed my skin! My kids would joke with me when I got home, “Dad, what’s it feel like to be an essential front line hero?” We would all laugh, because they knew as well as I did that the hospital was silent. But that laughter was tinny and bitter for me because the gap between public perception and my reality made me start to feel like a charlatan. The idea people had of what my work was like was totally unlike my actual days. It was so slow we had to furlough nurses.

At work there was no way to avoid being right in each other’s space. So I would work in close quarters with ten or so other nurses. We would be bumping into each other at times. I would necessarily be in physical contact with patients. Who knows what they may have had? But when I walked out the door there was this expectation that I would come no closer than six feet from any other person. That just was farcical to me. On the ER floor I had no expectation of a space cushion. If Covid was circulating in our area this would be my most likely place to come in contact with it. The demand to stay 6 feet apart the moment I was back in the general public made no sense. I like things to make sense.

At first there was no change to the rules governing visitation of patients. Then there was a vague and informal understanding that patients could have one visitor, or should we ban visitors altogether? The first time I heard one of the staff telling a patient they were not allowed any visitors, I rebelled. I knew the canned messaging on the hospital phones, when you were on hold still said that patients were allowed 1 visitor. I brought that up to the staff and told them that as long as our messaging continued to say that I would not ban visitors. If that was a step our hospital was going to take, I was determined to delay its implementation as long as I could. My strongly held feeling is that there is probably no other place in this country where the need to have someone with you that you know and trust is more acute. It is so beneficial to have someone who can be another set of eyes for you and advocate on your behalf. When you come into the ER you are at a particularly vulnerable spot. Maybe you’re in pain. You are likely nervous, even scared. The environment is full of uncertainty. Are we going to stick you with needles? What was it like the last time you were in a hospital? This could be your first time ever in an ER. How long would you be in here? What if you have covid? Are you going to be put on a ventilator? What if you die? What if you never see your husband, wife, sister, brother, father, mother, pastor, puppy, lover again? Never ever again? Maybe you shouldn’t have come. Shit!

If you want to talk to me about moral injury ask me about how evil, how criminal, how unethical and bottomlessly unloving it felt to be required to enforce a no visitors rule on another human being who may have had any of those very real concerns pin-balling around in their body, mind and soul. Being that person, in that place of not believing in what I was doing, of knowing it was wrong but being powerless to do the right thing led to some serious self loathing. I questioned if I should leave my job. Could I look at what I was doing and find a way to be a net positive force within the institution? I had to. If I left who would be there to witness what went on? I had a duty to stay. Whenever I could I would pass along knowledge that most people who tested positive got well on their own. I was honest in telling people that we hadn’t been hit hard at all to that point. I felt like a covert operative and maybe I really did imperil my position by breaking from the expected script.

For that first year that was how it was. Tony Fauci and Debra Birx got up on the television and scared the people and lied about the origin of the virus. They lied about masks. They lied about Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin…lied about steroids, lied about Remdesivir. They lied about “Social distancing”. They lied about “Two weeks to flatten the curve”. They stalled and stalled on any kind of treatment and lied saying there was none. They lied that the only way to stop Covid-19 and get out of this pandemic was to develop a vaccine. And for every living person to take it.

Any thinking person would have known that despite decades of trying there had never been a successful vaccine against a Corona virus. So we should have never been duped into pinning our hopes naively on an undeveloped product that was unlikely to succeed. We should have questioned the mRNA products being developed by Pfizer, a company that has paid out a long series of civil and criminal fines including the largest criminal fine in American history for fraud. We should have shared a collective skepticism about another company, Moderna that had never brought a product to market, but which had Tony Fauci as a collaborator. To believe that a “Vaccine” would be developed and quickly was absurd.

I was helpless to change anything in the obviously flawed approach that told patients to go home and isolate themselves. There was nothing else they could do but to come back if they couldn’t breathe. No mention of long standing use of nutrition, supplements, exercise, fresh air, rest, plenty of water. All common sense approaches to bolstering your immune system were scoffed at. I remember debating with a neighbor about the unlikelihood that for the first time in history there was a virus circulating that could in no way be treated and symptoms mitigated by any combination of known and commonly used therapies. He walked away shaking his head in disbelief and getting the dig that I was probably a Trump supporter as well as a conspiracy theorist and shouldn’t be working in health care if I was going to be spouting such dangerous misinformation. The Indoctrination was locked in with him.

In December 2020 when the recklessly rushed mRNA products were offered to the public I was agitated with concern that people were making a huge mistake by rushing to take these scantily studied FrankenShots. As a hospital worker I was early on the list of eligible souls. There was No way I was going to be taking such a concoction. My instinct to decline was only strengthened and concretized when the first few “Vaccine clinics” that were held at the hospital for employees sent at least 5 people on each of my shifts to the ER for treatment of immediate Adverse Reactions. What were the reactions? Tachycardias, Severe headaches, that became persistent, Dizziness and near syncope, chest pain and shortness of breath. One unfortunate young man developed anaphylactic shock and had to be intubated and flown to Stanford. He began suffering seizures, which he had never before had.

Those were the immediate reactions I can remember seeing first hand among believers. These were hospital workers who were eager to take the products. These were people who get a flu shot every Fall. These were people who think it’s fine to give a Hepatitis-B vaccine to a new-born baby on its first day of life. These were people who would be posting photos of themselves on social media with a band aid on their arm and holding up their Covid-19 Vaccination record card in an insane hunger to belong. I cannot think of a single one of them who filed a report with VAERS. It is no wonder that adverse events are overwhelmingly Not reported. Medical people are not trained to recognize a vaccine adverse event. A trip to the ER is considered a Serious Adverse Event. (SAE)

When the public at large became eligible to receive the shots I was dumbstruck by the near unanimity and haste with which folks scrambled to be first in line. It was a moment that struck hard against my faith in humanity. I contacted my three siblings and encouraged them to think long and hard before taking the experimental mRNA products. I shared with them my first-hand experiences caring for the immediately vaccine injured amongst my colleagues at work. I was careful not to tell them not to take the shots. I did say that in my view they were dangerous given what I’d seen. I brought up that nothing was known about the long and mid term effects they might have. I brought up that it was a new, untested technology and from what I had seen the short range effects were not good. I thought the stories of the reactions I had seen might illustrate the dangers in a factual way. I ended by telling them that I love them and just wanted them to have my input before they made a decision.

I don’t remember them thanking me for my concern. Two of them ignored me. The one who responded blasted me with his opinion that I was foolishly weighting my own experiences above the advice of the experts. He said my observations were “Just anecdotal” and I was falling for “Conspiracy theories” and “vaccine fallacies”. I suggested there were no “Experts”, since this whole damned thing was supposed to be brand new. Also not all highly credentialed doctors and scientists agreed on how to proceed. We differed on who seemed to be credible sources. I could tell the time was not right to plant a seed with him. How is familial strife for moral injury?

I took care of a high school teacher one afternoon. She was yellow with jaundice, liver failure. When her blood tests came back she was also in renal failure. She had recently been boosted. Surprisingly to me she has taught her classes that day. She felt alright in the morning, but by afternoon was dizzy, weak and nauseated. I couldn’t very well tell her that there was a good chance the shots may have contributed to her sudden organ failure. There would have been no benefit to her at that point. Two days later I saw her in the ICU, intubated, on a ventilator. She was not Covid positive. In my view the treatment was killing her. I don’t know if she survived to walk out of the hospital. In the ER sometimes you never learn the fate of people you pour your loving care into. Having to keep silent at times like this… Moral Injury.

In the Fall of 2021 we were expected to have had two doses of either Moderna or Pfizer mRNA experimental gene therapy products in order to continue to work at the hospital. My employer issued an ultimatum: Either present proof that you have begun the two shot series (at that time it was two shots) or face termination by September 30. I had thought long and hard about it. If I was going to take this product, the only reason was going to be so i could keep my job. That was unacceptable. I felt that if I allowed injection into my body of a product I didn’t believe would benefit me and which I had seen was dangerous just to keep my job that I would be saying, “I am your slave”. I could not bear that. I applied for a Religious exemption. There was back and forth with me having to explain my religious beliefs. There was no certainty they would accept my request. It was down to the last couple days and I hadn’t heard. I had to tell my wife that I may have to walk away from my 23 year career as a nurse (at that time). I told her that I would not submit to those terms. I might be fired and be unable to support my wife and three kids if that is what it came to.

I had never been under so much pressure. I had never felt so alone in all my life. The waiting was terrible. The pressure to give in was intense. Colleagues who I know also didn’t believe there was a therapeutic benefit from the shots were succumbing to the weight of it. Some took the jab to keep their job. Some took the jab so they could travel. Some just thought it was going to mean we could get back to our lives. None of those were reasons to allow an irresponsibly developed unknown substance to be injected into my body. That injection, once done can never be undone. That decision is permanent. With a genetic product of unknown effects down the road that permanence might not be only for the one taking it, but possibly for their genetic lineage in perpetuity. And you are going to threaten me with loss of my career If I don’t hurry up and take it? Shall I say it? Yes. Moral Injury.

When I did hear that my exemption was being accepted, I had to sign a contract stating that I would agree to take un-approved, Emergency Use Authorized lateral flow Covid antigen tests twice a week. This particular test was considered insufficient to determine Covid negative status for patients being admitted to the hospital. If they had this test and the result was negative, we had to test them again, this time with a PCR test. Only with a negative PCR test was a patient considered Covid Negative. But it was good enough for us! So I, along with the handful of other employees who had also requested and been granted religious accommodation had to participate in this performative theater twice a week. Immediately I saw this as punitive and discriminatory. There was language in the agreement stating that I agreed that if I missed one of the twice weekly tests I would be on a “Final Warning” status. If a second test was missed it would mean immediate termination. Well of course I didn’t “Agree”, but what else could I do but sign? In essence I was winning, but they still had to make it clear they had me on a string. And it was a precariously short and thin one at that.

Our system for documenting the tests was farcically flawed. Initially the tests were being administered by Employee Health on Mondays and Thursdays. Whether or not you were scheduled to work those days you had to report to the hospital between certain hours to be tested. The hospital quickly tired of performing the tests. Without announcement one week they changed the process to one where we tested ourselves in a small room in the ER. We would swab our nostrils and run the test. We were expected to come in a half hour before our shift to do this. We would record the results along with writing our name and date of birth on a 1 x 8 1/2 inch slip of paper. Then we would fold this in half and put it in a medium sized manilla envelope. The Emergency Dept manager would collect the envelope on no particular schedule that I could recognize and pass them along to HR.

I faithfully played my role in this charade so there would be no lapse. Over Christmas the manager took time off and the envelope was not checked for a longer than usual stretch of time. Around a week after christmas I got an email from the manager informing me that it looked like I had missed a test. She only had one slip from me in the envelope for one of the weeks. I assured her that I had been making a concerted effort not to miss a test since the inception of the program. I was sure I had not missed one. She checked her slips and came back to me saying that I was being put on “Final Warning”. I disputed the assertion that I had not tested. The hospital scheduled an “Investigational Meeting”. I requested CNA Union representation with me at the meeting, since it could turn into a disciplinary action.

My points of argument were that I had a flawless record for a year of this testing and the system for recording the tests was badly flawed. These slips of paper were so small that they could easily fall out of the envelope and become lost. One time I had found a stack of the slips out on a work surface. The manager had taken them from the envelope and mis-placed them. I brought them to her and nothing was said about the lapse. But she knew I knew. That she didn’t have a slip from me for one day was not proof that I hadn’t tested, but it was proof that the system for recording the tests was flawed and needed to be changed. If a nurses 20 plus year career was on the line we could not continue to use this accounting system. Naturally the hospital dropped it’s action against me and the upshot of my investigational meeting was that the hospital had to completely change their system for recording and reporting the testing results.

The testing requirement was finally ended September 17, 2022 after the California Health Services Agency was forced to admit that unvaccinated persons represented no more threat of spreading Covid than did the vaccinated.

There was a certain amount of make believe everyone was supposed to quietly go along with. Obvious inconsistencies and irrational policies were not to be questioned. We had already been seeing double vaccinated people testing positive for Covid. It was clear the vaccines weren’t working. Not for keeping people from getting Covid anyway. One of my fellow nurses came to me in tears the third time she had a positive test and pleaded with me for an answer to why she kept getting covid and I had never gotten it. She had taken every shot and she knew that I had taken none. She was losing faith. (And it was about time). I asked if she hadn’t noticed all the sepsis, Pulmonary Emboli, chest pain, strokes and bleeds amongst the “Vaccinated”. I put it to her that it seemed like these shots were ruining people’s immune function and blood clotting. She resigned a short time later. The testing of the unvaccinated continued for some time. The supposed reason for testing only the unvaccinated was rapidly eroding… even for the believers.

An old dear friend of my family’s passed away during the past year. He was the husband of my mom’s best friend from childhood. Our family and theirs used to go camping together. My parents would have their three kids and their parents would have my brothers and me for weekends when the couples needed a getaway. In Summertime there would be big parties and we were at theirs. They were at ours. They felt like cousins. When the announcement came out for Dan’s memorial gathering His widow, my mom’s best friend added a stipulation that proof of “Vaccination” would be required. That was an exclusion I hadn’t anticipated and it hurt. That gesture was cruel and pointless given what we already knew about tha failure of the vaccines.

The moral injuries came from all directions. We had gone from front line health care heroes to pariahs in short order. We hadn’t changed what we were doing. We were still on the front lines just like we had been from the start, just like those who had taken the jab. If there was risk it was to us not from us. Yet we were shamed, ridiculed, ostracized, called the worst sort of names. We were wished dead out loud by celebrities and MSM propaganda pushers. All for making an informed decision about our health, our bodies. We weren’t discriminating against you. You were discriminating against us.

So when I heard about this retreat about healing our moral injuries as “Health Care Heroes”, I was all in! I had plenty I wanted to say. I would bring attention to the inexcusable way we had been treated, discriminated against. I would shed light on the terrible things we were made to do to people, the way we had robbed them of their rights and dignity. I would talk about our part in causing unnecessary fear and loneliness for patients ant their loving families. I would share my sorrow, anger and frustration about the appalling mistreatment I had witnessed and had been subjected to by the health care System I have dedicated so much of my life to. I would rail about the disproportionate and misdirected Covid response. I would expose the fraud of PCR testing. I would talk about the damage to our children by shutting them out from school. I would make a case about how damaging it was for the kids to bed separated by plastic barriers when they did return to school. I would talk about the damaging effect of masks on children. I would talk about the psychological operation being deployed against humanity in lock-step world wide.

When the retreat started it quickly became clear that we would not be addressing any of the wrongs I was fired up to heal. This retreat was designed to help us feel good about ourselves and what we had done. The “Moral injury” we were meant to address was really about burnout from the ordeal of working through the confusing and fear driven beginnings of the pandemic response. It was a feel good exercise in the importance of self-care during stressful times. It was a lovely time once I was able to let go of my expectations and just focus on walking the immaculate grounds, staying in the nice, comfortable rooms, enjoying the Amazing food.

There were workshops and speakers. We shared feelings with each other but it would have felt inappropriate to have tried to take any of the sessions in the direction I had longed for. The retreat was free to the participants, which represented a very large gift, because the 1440 Multiversity campus where it was held is runs around $1000/ day. There were 40 of us for a three day event. I am grateful I was able to go. It did help me reset my adrenals and calm myself down. It gave me the closer to grow closer to some people I hardly knew. We were able to show gratitude for one another and acknowledge what a hard and at times awful job we do. For all that I feel blessed and am truly thankful.

I did not come away feeling like my Moral Injuries had been healed, nor even addressed. That was not what it was about in the end. I suppose I shall just have to continue to write and heal myself a little at a time. I will go home each night and try to be my best husband, father and human. I will soak up the love from my little dog and give it back to her. Try to swear a little less. Give people room on the road. Forgive myself and others too. Be open to receiving love and acceptance when it comes my way.