LONDON, ONT. -- Through the course of the pandemic, working every day with the worst cases of COVID-19, critical care nurse Brenda Morgan says it can put life into perspective. 

“Face my own mortality, when you see people your own age that are dying from this.”

She has worked in the trauma unit for decades, and this has been the most challenging and lengthy crisis she’s endured.

“The number of patients that we’re moving from one area of the unit to another, just in order to fit one more patient in,” Morgan says. “But I’ve never seen us moving patients as much.”

While daily case counts are beginning to drop, according to Morgan it is the culmination of serious casesthat will still be felt for quite some time.

“Keep in mind, some of those patients that came into the ICU might be there for weeks, and even months, and then they go out to the wards to recover.”

Critical care unit

That makes the system vulnerable if there is another surge of cases.

“I’m really concerned when I hear people talking about the fourth wave is going to be worse, so I’m not sure what that could possibly look like,” says Morgan.

Like most people, the London Health Sciences Centre nurse looks forward to the end of the pandemic.

“I think the hardest thing is, I have grandchildren that I miss hugging, and I’m afraid that by the time I can hug them again they will be too old to want to hang out with their grandmother.”