Kati Jo Daniels

COVID just hits your lungs and takes your lungs out. It’s miserable. I’ve held so many hands, hugged so many people and promised to be there for them. It’s just been heartbreaking. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with. I’m not an emotional person, but I probably cry after every single one of my shifts. We have dealt with more death in the last two years than my entire 10-year career in respiratory. We’ve had healthy people dying left and right, and in the worst ways possible, because you just can’t breathe.

“It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with.”

Kati Jo Daniels, Respiratory Therapist

I had a young patient, the same age as me, who I had been with from the very beginning. I talked with him about his family, wife, and his two little girls who were the same age as my daughter. He told me how scared he was and I told him, “I’ll be here with you through everything and we’ll get through this together.” He got to the point where he needed to be intubated, and he looked at me and said, “I need you to tell my wife and my girls that I love them and that I promise I’ll always be there for them.” We intubated him and it just kept getting worse and worse, so we called his wife to come see him.

Right before she got there, his heart stopped. I was the one that started compressions on him. We coded him and coded him and we could not bring him back. And when I walked out the door after they called it, I saw his wife and little girls and I just lost it. I started crying and she looked at me and said, “You’re Kati Jo aren’t you.” And I grabbed her and I hugged her – just bawling. That was my first one. That was one of my hardest ones. Here’s this guy who I’ve been with from the beginning – he’s the same age as me, he has a family…it hit hard. I cried for a good three or four days after that.

Alyssa Schumacher

It’s difficult because it’s so overwhelming and just so sad. I’ve had a couple of emotional breakdowns – crying and just taking a few moments at work to myself to kind of regain myself because I never anticipated so much sadness over these last two years. It’s stressful as a respiratory therapist when you can’t see the patients the way that you want to see them because you have so many of them to see. There have been multiple drives home where the only thing you can do is just cry because you don’t feel like you’ve conquered your shift. You feel defeated and you’re passing that defeat onto your coworkers because they’re the ones relieving you.

“I never anticipated so much sadness over these past two years.”

Alyssa Schumacher, Respiratory Therapist

So for me, it’s been a huge rollercoaster of ups and downs. And wondering if this is what I should be doing still? Am I supposed to be a respiratory therapist? Why am I weakening? All the way up to feeling so good when you leave work because you had that one patient that made it and you’re overjoyed. Dealing with those emotions is really difficult.

But I get up and go to work and take care of my patients because if I don’t, that’s one less person to care for our community. Our hospital serves 14 counties and that’s a huge area. If one of my family members needed care in the hospital and I’m not there, that’s one less respiratory therapist available for those services. That feeling did not come to me right away because there was a lot of hurt and sadness and anger prior to me changing my attitude. But when you see that patients aren’t able to get outstanding care because of being short staffed, it just clicked in me. I can’t quit because they need me. These patients need me. My team needs me. And you can’t effectively serve your community if you don’t have the people to work.

Mary Ellyn Muhlhauser

I’ve been at CentraCare for 34 years and I think the most memorable experience I’ve had involved with a young mother that was pregnant in the ICU with COVID. She was very, very sick. She was 32 weeks pregnant and I was working the day we needed to take the baby. We were going to take her to the O.R, but she started going downhill so we had to do an emergency bronch and deliver the baby up in the ICU room. In that moment the adrenaline runs because it’s a life and death situation.

“In that moment the adrenaline runs because it’s a life and death situation.”

Mary Ellyn Muhlhauser, Respiratory Therapist

There’s so much of this experience that is difficult. It’s not that we didn’t see death prior to the pandemic, but the frequency of death right now is really hard. You’re working with the nurses, doctors and every facet of the care team to treat these patients, but seeing patients decline continually and the prevalence of death can be overwhelming.

But what gives me hope is coming to work and seeing everyone showing up every day. It’s having those conversations with people on the RT team and our care teams, and seeing people smiling with their eyes. It’s seeing there’s still positivity in our organization and within all our staff as a whole. I try to take things day by day, and week by week, and just find those silver linings in each day – and give patients the best care that we can. Because that’s why we’re all here.

Maggie Baumann

I graduated in 2019, so by the time I started working at CentraCare, I only had about three months of ICU experience before the pandemic hit. So it went from having one, maybe two critical patients, to COVID hitting and having five to six at a time. It was a big learning curve.

“I went from having one, maybe two critical patients, to COVID hitting and having five to six at a time.”

Maggie Baumann, Respiratory Therapist

At the beginning, I felt numb a lot. There was so much changing, so much happening, and so much to wrap your head around. I was 20 years old when it started and I had no idea what hit me. I was just taking it day by day. I’d get home after a shift and I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think of anything because so much was taken out of me. It was beyond lonely. And COVID is still the majority of my life because I’m physically and emotionally drained at the end of the day.

I’ve second guessed myself so many times in the last couple years, like, is it worth it? But the respiratory department feels like a family. My coworkers are truly the only ones that understand exactly what we’re going through and we’re all in this together. I love being a respiratory therapist. This is my team. This is my family. Peggy is an amazing manager and she does so much to inspire me and all of us. She motivates me daily to remember why I started and how far we’ve come. So that’s what’s keeping me here. CentraCare is my home.