'My dream is a living hell': Florida nurse begs COVID patient to go on ventilator

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — "You will die honey! Please! If you want to live this has to be done now."

Those are the words 26-year-old Lauren Anderson, an ER nurse at Halifax Health Medical Center, wrote on a white piece of computer paper to one of her COVID-19 patients last week. The patient was struggling to breathe and needed to be put on a ventilator. 

“They told me ‘I want to go home. I just want to go home,’” Anderson said, explaining that the only way the patient could communicate with her was through notes. “And I wrote on the paper: 'You will die. You will die.'” 

For 12 hours a day, four days a week, Anderson dons her personal protective equipment, slips on her respirator and walks into her own personal battlefield, the Halifax Health Medical emergency room in Daytona Beach. 

Every day, patients fill the waiting room. Nurses complete intake procedures in the hallways while waiting for beds to become available, and health care workers perform triage on patients coming in around the clock by ambulances, Anderson said. 

“These are ghastly ill patients just constantly coming in, they're emergent,” Anderson said. "It's like Pandora's box when a patient comes in. We just always assume everybody's got COVID, so they're all in isolation.”

As of Wednesday, Halifax Health had 144 COVID-19 patients across its three hospitals , according to spokesman John Guthrie. That was slightly less than its peak of 147 patients on Tuesday. 

High risk of transmissibility: Are crowds safe as delta variant spreads? Experts explain COVID risks at common gatherings

“We can't even build enough rooms overnight to hold these patients,” Anderson said. “So they're staying in the ER.”

The hospital system is currently training travel nurses to staff COVID-19 areas while the hospital still cares for non-COVID patients, she said.  

Across the state, 60% of hospitals expect a critical staffing shortage within the next seven days, according to the Florida Hospital Association. 

“It’s mirroring what I saw in New York,” Anderson said. “I can’t even put into words how terrible it is.”

Caring for patients in New York

In April 2020, Anderson took a voluntary furlough from her job at Halifax Health and went to New York City, where she spent six weeks helping in a hospital overrun by the virus. There, she worked in the intensive care unit, with patients on ventilators who couldn’t speak. 

After she completed her six weeks, she took two months off and began seeing a therapist. 

“I had to go start going to therapy and I had to start taking medications to help myself get through it,” Anderson said. “I didn't think that I was going to be able to go back to work.”

Now, Anderson is back on the frontlines in the emergency room, asking questions patients probably never imagined: Do you want us to take life-saving measures if it comes to it? Who do you want to appoint to make medical decisions for you? Do you want to sign a do not resuscitate order? How do you want to divide up your assets should you die?

“It's a horrible conversation that you have to have with any patient, because in the end, we have to make a will, so it's essentially, 'What do you want in your will,'” Anderson said. “And we are making these decisions within 10 to 15 minutes — like we have to do this now, or you will not live. And I never thought I'd have to do that in my career.”

She said her experience now, in her hometown, at her hospital, is worse that her experience in New York. 

“I thought that I was past that and we weren't going to be dealing with this … 2.0 delta variant, that's from hell,” Anderson said. “I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know when this will end.”

The delta variant is a much more contagious variation of COVID-19. As of July 30, nearly 3,000 variant cases were identified in Florida, according to data released by the Florida Department of Health through an attorney representing media outlets, including The News-Journal, a part of the Paste BN Network. 

You're hired: Economy adds 943,000 jobs in July despite COVID surge, worker shortages as unemployment falls to 5.4%

Since mask mandates have been lifted across the country, Anderson said hospitals have seen an influx of COVID-19 patients. 

“We got comfortable and we were like OK, it's not that bad anymore, and then all of a sudden the delta variant came in, it came to Daytona Beach, and it's just terrible,” Anderson said.

And while Anderson said many people in the community are still comfortable, nurses are seeing the threat first hand. 

"We’ve got to start protecting ourselves more," she said.  

And the surge doesn't just affect Halifax Health. 

“It's a huge systemic issue between clinics, outpatient clinics, doctors offices, ERs — we’re so full,” Anderson said. “The whole community is ill, it's not just Halifax, it's that it's all, all the community hospitals are just drowning, literally drowning."

As of Aug. 3, 12,408 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Florida, setting another state record, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Statewide, 84% of inpatient hospital beds and 86.5% of ICU beds are in use, according to the Florida Hospital Association. As of Aug. 2, 21% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are in the ICU and 13% are on ventilators. 

"We feel like we can't give adequate care, because we're so busy," Anderson said. 

New mother and vaccination

Up until a week ago, Anderson was against getting a COVID-19 vaccine. 

When the vaccines first became available to health-care workers in late 2020, she was pregnant and didn’t know if it would impact her child. After she gave birth to her son Eric in May, she was still wary since she was breastfeeding. 

But she changed her mind when she saw a doctor who works in a smaller emergency room post on social media that he had five cardiac arrests come in and not enough nurses to help all of them. 

“That's when I was like, OK, this is real,” Anderson said. “This is clicking in, this is where I really need to make a decision on what I can do to help my family.”

So Anderson had a long talk with a physician at Halifax Health. 

“One day I woke up and I said OK after that discussion, I'm getting the shot,” she said. 

So last week, Anderson received her first dose of the Moderna vaccine. In three weeks she’ll get her second dose. 

“I am with a brand new baby and a family, and I have to think I could potentially bring this home and I can't even imagine having this,” Anderson said. “If one of my family members were to get this and die, I couldn't process that."

More than 95% of COVID-19 patients across Florida are unvaccinated, according to the Florida Hospital Association. 

The Backstory (Opinion): My brother is one of millions who won't get the COVID-19 vaccine. I asked why. Here are his reasons, my responses.

As of July 30, 39% of Florida’s eligible population was unvaccinated, according to the Florida Department of Health’s latest update.

Anderson worries about what would happen to her son if she or her spouse were to end up on a ventilator. 

“Now I have those thoughts — this is just way worse than being in New York City,” Anderson said. “Even when I was alone in New York City, this is worse.”

While younger people without underlying health conditions tend to fare better when they contract COVID-19, Anderson said she worries she could become one of the unlucky ones and said it's not worth the risk.

And now that hospitals, including Halifax Health, are barring in-person visitors for COVID-19 patients, she’s even more terrified of getting the virus. 

“I see patients that are on life support — patients that are the sickest they've ever been in their lives. I put myself in their shoes and I'm like 'What the hell would I do,'” Anderson said. “What the hell would my family do? They can't come see me, they can't come visit. I'm definitely scared of getting COVID.”

Looking forward

Anderson wants to begin seeing a therapist again. 

“I started having nightmares again,” she said. “I want to start getting back into seeing a therapist. My mental health, I can't just ignore it, it has to be addressed now or it'll just get progressively worse. I think people are forgetting that this is very relevant for us. For some of us, this is haunting.”

What keeps Anderson going is coming home each day from the hospital, getting herself cleaned up and spending time with her 2-month-old son. 

“I can sit here and I can spend time with him and he's innocent,” she said. “And he's always happy to see me, so he's my little therapy.”

She knows that in the future she’ll need to take a break. 

“I love my job and I love what I do and I love working in the ER. As a kid, that's all I ever wanted to do,” Anderson said. “Now I'm living that dream. But my dream is like a living hell now.”

'Catastrophically destroyed': Dixie Fire wipes out California gold rush town of Greenville

Follow Nikki Ross on Twitter: @NikkiInRealLife.