Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir

Cassandra Alexander

Jul 2021 · Cassie Alexander

About this eBook

This book is for anyone, nurse or otherwise, who is furious about how 2020 went down and—how 2021 is going.

On April 25th, 2021 at 10:55 in the morning I messaged my chat group of girlfriends from where I work as a nurse on an ICU floor: “Nothing like feeling strongly suicidal at a job where you’re supposed to be keeping people alive,” and then tweeted that my “mental health wasn’t great” and deleted the Twitter app off of my phone because I didn’t want to “overshare.”

           That I felt like dying.

           That I would’ve rather died than still be at work.

           I am not alone.

          In 2020 there were roughly four million nurses in America. Only 2.7 million U.S. soldiers fought in the Vietnam War. Those who came back from Vietnam, having witnessed atrocities—and in some cases, participated in them—were changed forever.

           You can’t send four million people into a wartime-equivalent situation without psychological consequences.

           And yet that’s what America has done.

           Nurses spent a year battling a largely unknown assailant. Running low on gear. Fearing we might bring something deadly home. Getting coughed on by people who pretended that our fights were imaginary, that our struggles—watching people die, day after day, no matter what we did—were literally fake.

           Nurses are scarred.

           And unless people understand what we went through and commit to never let anyone lie in the future about public health, we will never become whole.

Year of the Nurse: A Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir is Cassandra Alexander's poignant effort to come to grips with suicidal ideation and PTSD after being a covid nurse in an ICU in 2020. Comprised of original essays and her chronological journals, tweets, and emails as she attempted to save lives, including her own—this book will let you experience last year from the bedside.

Come and understand what it was like.

Ratings and reviews

Raw, Real Memoir from a Nurse in the Pandemic Trenches -- As an RN who has worked during the pandemic, though not as directly as this nurse author, I was fascinated by this book when I saw it at a book review site. The book is real and raw... and a surprisingly gripping read. The author wrote it as part of her therapy while recovering from suicidal ideation because of what she was dealing with every day as a COVID nurse. She wants to inform people about the realities of COVID, especially the deniers, as well as to be heard and feel like she has retroactive companions on the journey (we readers). While everything was happening, from March 2020 to July 2021, the author documented her nursing experiences on social media and in private journals. The book is structured by month, and we see her social media posts, journal entries, and paragraphs when she pulls it all together for analysis or adds extra detail. She also explains some nursing/medical realities for readers who are not nurses. I even learned from some of that because I am not an ICU nurse and never have been; I’ve been a general med-surg and addictions RN. Everyone who is a COVID denier should read this book. If you want to know what it's like for someone on the front lines during the pandemic, working directly with very ill COVID patients, you should definitely read this book. However, if you don't like profanity or don't have a strong stomach for the realities of nursing in trying times, you may want to skip the book. Still, the book has a lot of value, if you can take it. Highly recommended. I received a free copy of this book, but that did not affect my review.

I reached the end of this book and all I want to do is howl in grief for the way we, as human beings, failed one another, and continue to do so even to this day. I want to hug the author, and every other medical professional who has been in the trenches fighting to get us here as safely as possible. This was a very raw, somewhat unfiltered, look at the last year and a bit of the author’s life. It made me cry and it made me want to break fragile things. I don’t know what the pandemic still has in store for us, but I can only hope that we have learned our lessons and will do better in the future. Somehow, I have this terrible feeling I’m going to be disappointed. The human spirit is a resilient thing, and so I remain hopeful. I received a complimentary copy of this book through Booksprout.

A Chronological examination of Nursing behind the mask during the 2020-21 COVID-19 Pandemic Author Cassie Alexander’s book The Year of the Nurse is written using her Private Diary, Explanatory Essays, Personal Rants, Tweets, and Two Nurses Talking’s emails. Along the way are interspersed the evolving facts of the Pandemic, it’s spread, and public reactions. Heartbreaking and Horrifying to read. I received an advance copy from the author

About the author

Cassandra is an RN of 14 years, including burn, ambulance transport, and ICU experience, and a paranormal romance author.