Last Thursday I went to get vaccinated, totally clueless about what would happen.
After a couple of minutes in line, I was called and entered the old gymnasium in my hometown.
I’m not gonna lie. It was weird seeing the place where I had PT transformed into this improvised health unit, with dozens of chairs spread across the wooden floor where I played football, and these small cabinets, made of fake walls, right in the middle of the gym, where I did sprints.
I filled the paperwork and sat down for a couple of minutes before being called. I wasn't' inside that cabinet for more than 40 seconds. It was done, all I had to do was to wait 30 minutes in another area.
Sitting on a chair, I texted my girlfriend and turned on my Kindle.
And then, it happened.
I woke up with the sound of the e-reader hitting the floor and someone's voice calling a nurse. When I opened my eyes and saw the nurses coming my way, I quickly realized that I had fainted.
The 2 extremely nice nurses started to talk with me. They told me that I should go to the Emergency Room, a bigger cabinet I hadn't noticed, in the corner of the gym. Worried about not being able to carry me, they asked someone for a wheelchair to which I reply, as calmly as possible, that I could walk.
Once in the room, I lay down on a stretcher, with my feet elevated.
I was feeling weirdly calm. Before passing out I had felt some sweat but dismissed it. However, laying down on that stretcher I remembered what “feeling normal” was, but because the nurses were worried about me, I kept doing what they told me to, letting out a casual “I’m feeling fine, there’s no need to worry” when I could.
They checked my pulse, gave me sugar and a cup of water. After a couple of minutes, another man also passed out and ended up being carried there, already conscious.
I saw, with admiration, the way one nurse gave instructions to the man while talking on the phone with someone I presumed was part of the National Healthcare System. She was worried that, if people started to faint, they wouldn't be able to give a proper response and was trying to understand what were the next steps. Meanwhile, I was already feeling perfectly normal, drinking my glass of water, when another guy entered the room and sat down next to me. He had fainted for a couple of seconds as well.
Later, we were told that there were 3 possibilities:
There was something wrong with that specific batch, like what happened in Mafra.
It was anxiety-induced fainting, like what happened in the US.
Or, according to the nurses, in my case, a lack of glucose in the blood since I was fasting.
While the nurse was talking on the phone, the one who had vaccinated me walked into the room. She asked us how we were doing before sharing with the other nurse that she had been the one who had vaccinated all of us. The older one, still talking on the phone, asked her to stay put and watch out for us, while she solved the situation.
She agreed and said something like:
It's for the best, I don't want to kill anyone!
It was a joke, of course. But one of those nervous jokes we do in order to change the mood.
We were perfectly safe and, even though I can only speak for myself, I'm willing to bet that, if something more serious had happened, none of us would think that she had had any fault.
But she thought she did! In a long "line of production", between researchers and scientists, that nurse (who was younger than me) was the "last worker", someone whose involvement and agency in all this were fairly small. And yet, she felt responsible for us, as if it had been her fault.
At that moment, with that nervous joke, I got it. It took some time, but I finally got it: the amount of emotional pressure that health workers suffer is monstrous. Not only in these pandemic times but always!
Don't get me wrong, is not like I've never thought about it. Especially in this last year. I've seen the videos, read the articles, and heard the stories of doctors and nurses venting about the amount of work that they had and how our national health system was on the verge of collapsing.
I remember a particular testimonial from the daughter of a nurse in the most critical moment of the pandemic, here in Portugal.
Today, my mom got home and told me: "I want to hug you. Today I had to choose between ventilating a 27 year-old girl or a 73 year old man". I didn't want to know what happened. Instead, I microwave her a soup, left it on top of the table, lowered my mask, blew her a kiss and went back to my room so she could eat calmly in the kitchen.
It's really hard not to get emotional with these stories. However my insight was not about the pandemic, but about ownership.
Extreme Ownership
In 2015, the American SEAL's Jocko Willink and Leif Babin wrote a book called "Extreme Ownership".
They shared their 3-word philosophy as leaders in one of the most important fractions of the American army: seek more responsibility.
Extreme ownership. Leaders must be responsible for everything in their world. There's no one else to blame.
In a world where we give a lot of attention to pointless victimization, those who take ownership, make decisions, and step forward, touch us in a special way.
When that nurse made that joke, I thought about Jocko and Extreme Ownership.
It's funny how many of us criticize the way others deal with their stuff without first looking at our own life and assess if we're taking responsibility for our issues. If there are people that feel tremendous pressure when taking ownership of a typo in a given document, can you imagine how hard must be for someone who works in Health Services?
We're talking about an impact on somebody's life, not in a metaphorical way, but in a real one, with immediate consequences. There aren't that many contexts where a decision can literally save lives but health workers do it almost every day.
My dad was a pharmacist for years. He told me that the pressure one feels is constant, even when you're in behind the counter.
Is this the right pill? What if someone gets sick? Or something worse?
These are some of the common questions one can find in the internal dialogue of health professionals. In this area, it seems that a passion for helping people isn't enough. You need a tremendous amount of courage as well.
Otherwise, you'll end up having 2 kinds of people:
Those who seek ownership
Those who seek a scapegoat
On that Thursday, in that gym, that nurse went for extreme ownership, even though she didn't need to. That inspired me. Not only that, but it made me feel even more empathy for all health workers that take extreme ownership and give their best in these hard times.
To all of those, my deepest gratitude.