I still have nightmares every night’ “” health workers struggle with PTSD symptoms as coronavirus takes toll

I still have nightmares every night’ “” health workers struggle with PTSD symptoms as coronavirus takes toll

A nurse evaluates a patient that had just been admitted to the emergency room at Regional Medical Center on May 21, 2020 in San Jose, California. Frontline workers are continuing to care for coronavirus COVID-19 patients throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

DETROIT - Critical care nurse Kelsey Ryan wakes up choking at night, reliving the trauma of treating “” and losing “” patients to Covid-19 during the height of Michigan's pandemic in the early spring. 

In her dreams, she's laying in a hospital bed, unable to breath as her colleagues at Beaumont Health in metro Detroit force a ventilator tube down her throat.

"I still have nightmares every night. My managers and best friend at work putting a tube down my throat while I'm crying and begging them not to. Just like all of my patients did. I wake up choking," said the 28-year-old registered nurse in Michigan.

Ryan was also a Covid-19 patient after testing positive in late-March, but she was able to recover at home without being hospitalized.

Shell shock

She lost more patients in March and April than she had lost over the previous six years. For nurses like Ryan, the peak of the coronavirus pandemic felt like a war,  she said.