Nurse of the Week Felica Croft Articulates the Pain of this Delta Summer

Our Nurse of the Week, Felicia Croft, RN is a 34-year-old ICU nurse in Covid-beleaguered Shreveport, LA. The latest surge has hit her close to home in every sense of the phrase. She is treating neighbors and friends in the Covid-19 ICU unit at Willis-Knighton Health System, and just about every member of her immediate family has been infected at some point. Earlier this month, Croft’s husband was still very sick and she was coping with the pandemic on both home and work fronts. Feeling overwhelmed while driving home after a particularly grim shift, she pulled over to try to get her head together. She parked in a Dairy Queen parking lot, picked up her phone, and for about three minutes—blinking to hold back tears, and occasionally pausing to take a deep breath—Croft opened her heart in a video that may leave you blinking, too.

“So many of the people that we’re getting haven’t been vaccinated, and—just to know that there’s something that could help [save them], and they aren’t taking advantage of it . . . .

I can’t explain the feeling of defeat—when you do everything, you pour everything into a patient . . . and it’s not enough.”

The Delta variant is proving to be faster, stronger, and far more transmissible than its forebears. Even as earlier surges reaped over half a million American lives, fear and denial prompted many to tell themselves, “Oh, this is mainly a danger to the elderly and people in poor health.” Even some ICU nurses believed this, as they saw the old and those with comorbidities pass away, while survivors moved to other units to begin the slow, painful recovery process. Now, as most seniors have gotten both jabs, Delta is making a meal of the unvaccinated. SARS-CoV-2 is filling hospitals with younger, healthier bodies—and even pediatric wards are treating tiny Covid patients. So this time, nurses are wrestling with frustration and anger on top of the stress, grief, and fear they’ve been accumulating since last year.

Felicia Croft had to tell someone what it is like. Fighting back tears, she addressed her camera:

“I’ve worked in the Covid ICU for pretty much the whole pandemic… And today was probably one of the most emotionally hard days since the pandemic started. The Delta wave that we’re seeing now, people are younger and sicker, and we are intubating—and losing people my age and younger. People with kids that are my kids’ age that are never going to see their kids graduate. They’re never going to meet their grand-kids…”

Her 14-year-old daughter, Croft added, had come to her the day before and said,

“We need to pray for [her friend’s] parents… And her friend’s parents are both in my ICU! And one of them may not go home. And as a nurse, to know that if you can’t get these two people home, that their kids… will be orphaned… and my daughter will ask, ‘why didn’t you save them?’ So many of the people that we’re getting haven’t been vaccinated, and—just to know that there’s something that could help [save them], and they aren’t taking advantage of it…. Yes, we have seen people who were vaccinated, but they usually go home…. I can’t explain the feeling of defeat—when you do everything, you pour everything into a patient—and it’s not enough!”

Caring for a patient who is your own age—losing a patient who is your own age to Covid-19—is a bitter pill for young nurses to swallow. In a world where wearing a protective mask in the middle of a pandemic can arouse heated debate (and, if temperatures rise, fistfights or shootings—see list at end of story), the road to many a hospital bed right now is paved with false claims and rumors. You cannot blame the patient for having been lulled into a false sense of security, or for being misled, but it’s deeply traumatic to encounter so much suffering and loss of life (or quality of life, depending on the outcome) that could have easily been prevented. Croft’s confessional touched a nerve; over a million people viewed it. If you have not seen it yet, the full three-minute recording is below.

An Ongoing Epidemic? Recent Shootings and Assaults Over Masking Disputes

In the interests of fairness, it should be noted that in 2020, the unmasked were likelier to be plaintiffs in violent disputes, but the reported incidents were less violent. In spring 2021, though, people started responding with fists, guns, saliva, etc. when asked to don a mask.

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Koren Thomas

Associate Editor at DailyNurse

Koren Thomas (pictured with Assistant) was the associate editor of DailyNurse from late 2019 through July, 2022—and she was not joking about the "issue postage stamps saluting US nurses" idea. Send your article ideas, submissions, Nurse of the Week suggestions, comments, and corrections to the current Editor in Chief at [email protected].