Looking Back

Deb Peterson, MD

In a small hospital we have a lot of very young nurses; it’s often their first job out of training. And they needed to feel like they were doing a good job when it felt to them like they really weren’t, because they felt like they were in over their head. So I was cheerleading along with taking care of the patients, when often I was also scared to death, because they were some very, very sick people.

We had people in the hospital for weeks that ultimately recovered, but were still quite ill.

Deb Peterson, MD

So I look back, and I think, ‘wow, did we really do it?’ And we did. I learned a lot about medical care, I learned a lot about myself and how to remain resilient. It’s been a journey.

We each had patients that were what you call ‘maxed and stacked.’ They were maxed out on heated high flow, plus they had a nasal cannula underneath, and there was nowhere to send them. And we had to make decisions about whether to intubate or not, because if we intubate we have the vent, but we don’t have a respiratory therapist or the technology to really keep the patient, and is it in the patient’s best interest? So the MOD physician from CentraCare was very, very helpful at kind of handholding with us, helping us make decisions. Having someone else in your corner helping you with that was really helpful. I can’t say enough about it.

I’m not sure that people actually understood how many really, really sick people stayed in Redwood Falls, Litchfield, Paynesville and other western regional hospitals, because of the bed situation. I’m not sure the public actually understands or knows how many really, really sick people we took care of, because you don’t go out and talk about it. And I think people got tired. People that were sick of the pandemic just went into their shell and just didn’t want to hear about it anymore. They went back to what they considered their normal life. So there is a lot of stuff that went on, that we know about, that the general public will never really understand.