Column: From exhausted Hawaii hospice nurse: Please get the COVID-19 vaccine

Many unvaccinated people have been asking me lately what I’m seeing in the world of hospice and COVID-19, with specific questions about the vaccines. Let me start off by saying: This COVID-19 thing is serious. This is Russian roulette with a virus. If you haven’t done so already, please get vaccinated.

I’m tired of all the deaths. This COVID-19 delta variant is particularly nasty and highly transmissible. People are dying. Young, healthy people are dying. I’m seeing this every day now. It’s heartbreaking to watch someone suffocating, unable to catch their breath. Want to know what that’s like? Stick your head in a bucket of water and hold it there as long as possible. Longer. Try waterboarding. Now consider that’s your existence every second day and night, weeks to months on end.

Some people figure that if they are hospitalized, they’d be miraculously cured, like on TV. Here’s the truth: Medicine can only help a body to heal itself. If a body is unable to heal itself, it will die. Medicine cannot stop that. We can keep a body alive longer on ventilation with hopes that the body can continue to heal, but eventually the body either heals itself or it dies. And even if your body can heal enough to continue living, there can still be significant damage for the rest of your life.

So please, get vaccinated.

Will the vaccine stop you from catching COVID-19? No. But it can stop you from DYING when you do catch it. We now have the option to preemptively create our own immunity to COVID-19, which helps our bodies fight it off when we come into contact with it. So why face a virus without an appropriate defense system? Vaccines help us make that defense system.

Will the vaccine always provide immunity? No. There are some rare individuals who, despite getting vaccinated, do not develop immunity. But the vast majority of us have immune systems capable of creating an effective defense system. So get vaccinated.

THE VACCINE does not give you COVID-19. Yes, you may feel achy and cruddy for a couple days. Actually, that’s a good thing. Feeling achy and having a low-grade fever are signs that your body is activating its immune system to create immunity against the substance in a vaccine. In this case, the vaccine teaches your immune system to recognize a specific part of the outside of the COVID-19 virus and then mount a defense against this specific part.

Now, I will grant there are a few exceptions for getting vaccinated — but these are very few. If you are immunocompromised, have an autoimmune disorder, or have had a serious life-threatening reaction to vaccines in the past, then you should talk to your doctor before receiving the vaccine. But religious beliefs are not valid, unless your religion also teaches it’s OK to die young. I can’t imagine any religion really wanting this.

“I’m afraid” and “I heard this one person had a bad side effect” also are not valid reasons. Whether it’s fear of needles or worry about unknown substances being injected into your body, fear and worry are not valid reasons to avoid the vaccine. If you’re hospitalized with COVID-19, you will get plenty of needles and unknown substances injected into your body, and possibly a ventilator, trach and tube feedings — as well as all the indignities of incontinence, possibly a Foley catheter (urinary drain) and a rectal tube (poop drain).

WE NURSES are burned out on all the deaths. We have gone through crying, begging, pleading that the dying stops. But it continues. Now, recently, deaths are coming two and three at a time. We are frustrated. We are angry. We are exhausted.

These deaths are unnecessary. Our exhaustion and compassion fatigue are unnecessary. Only you can stop yourself from dying, only you can help our jobs be just that much easier.

So, please. Get vaccinated.

Kailua resident Rebecca Forgan, R.N., B.S.N., is a hospice nurse at an Oahu hospice agency, helping patients and families transition from hospital to hospice care.