Covid Hell

I just joined and I need to just decompress. I have no idea if i am doing this correctly. I do have a Bipolar II diagnosis but it is unrelated to this, well, maybe exacerbates it. I apologize for the length.. I am a Healthcare worker - respiratory therapist to be exact. Covid has been a thing in my area for about a year. We had our initial surge around this time last year. I was at work one day and we had a couple patients. When I came back ro days later we had our entire ICU filled with very critical covid patients. Some of our single patient rooms had to be used as double rooms. Our progressive care floor was split in half and half of it was covid. Every shift was horrible. Always a code blue or rapid response that would lead to us intubating a patient. It was early. We had no clue what to do for or expect with these patients. People were dying left and right. We were initially told to intubate right away but we found that once people were hooked up to a Ventilator, the change of coming off was very slim. Back at this time we had absolutely no visitors allowed. Many people did not speak our language. They were lonely, confused, and scared. Many, many of my patients died over the following four weeks. I was numb at the time. Did not know what to think or do. I dreaded work because I knew someone would die. A late 20s male, mid 30s mom, and a coworkers family member all passed one day. It was hell. Our first surge ended in mid to late May. The summer was calm. I was not. I was not sleeping much. I felt empty. So much death. Flash backs to code blues and compassionate withdraw of cares. Watching people die with out a spouse or child pltgere to hold their hand, give them hugs... We thought things were fine. We had hoped we avoided a second surge. We were wrong. Little did we know that the first round was just a taste of what was to come. It started in September. A few cases here and there. By October half of our 30 + bed ICU was covid, half of our 40 bed PCU was covid, half of med surg floor was covid. We would literally clear a room only to fill it with in the hour. People going to crap left and right. You would be in a room trying to take care of a patient who was doing poorly on a vent only to be called about 3 other patients doing poorly. You had to prioritize and maje horrible decisions. We would intubate 3 patients a day on average (a lot for our smaller hospital) and code one. By October our supplies was running low.few ventilators, BiPAP machines, hight flow nasal cannulas.. You'd have to stop and think "this person is on only a moderate amount of support so I can pull that machine for someone who needs it more" etc. Thank goodness in late October we got more oxygen delivering devices. Thank goodness we had a better idea of what to do. We did everything in our power to keep people from getting intubated. Continuous BiPAP, self prone positioning, hight flow nasal cannula for breaks, allowing saturation to be low if patient was in no distress and alert. We now knew once they did it would be weeks of torture only for the patient to die a drawn out, tortuous death. We were keeping people paralyzed and on their stomachs. We hoping we were keeping them sedated enough that they would not be aware of everything but not too sedated that blood pressures would tank. Many of them were already maxed out on blood pressure support. We would try so hard to keep people alive for weeks and weeks even though we knew it was futile. So many broken ribs from many chest compressions. The crunch echos in my ears.. So many swollen, puffed up faces with sores from having to lay in prone position for 16+ hours at a time haunting my sleep. So many families crying over their loved ones (we could have one visitor a day at this time, more if we were withdrawing care). It was the hardest time of my career. I have done this almost a decade. I saw more people die in one week back in October than I had in my entire career un to that point. I went home defeated daily. I cried. I couldn't sleep again. I ate all the food because I needed to feel something other than hopelessness and sadness. This lasted until almost Christmas. Cases slowly dropped from then until February. I had lost about 40 lbs when covid first started. I have gained it all back because I am still eating to fill a hole left in my soul. I feel awful. I hate things I used to love. I am getting flash backs of horrible situations. I have having nightmares. About a month ago my area lifted many covid regulations and we are slowly seeing more cases. Instead of one or two a week it is one or two a day and I KNOW I am not ready to do this again. I know my mental health cannot take it. I also know that I am a glutton for punishment and I know that I would not quit if we got another surge. I could not abandon my coworkers of the patients. I just need to learn how to cope. How to be me. How to move past this.