HEROES ARE HUMAN

A book that offers insights into life on the front lines during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

At first glance, Delaney doesn’t seem like the obvious person to write a book that compares the work of health care workers to that of soldiers. He was a National Basketball Association referee for 25 years, but his prior experience as an undercover police officer is where he learned about the impact of PTSD firsthand. In these pages, Delaney reveals the challenges and trauma faced by doctors, nurses, patients, and loved ones during the first stages of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Andrejs E. Avots-Avotins, vice president of medical affairs for Baylor Scott & White Health in Texas, notes that the Covid-19 crisis in Dallas reminded him of the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Nurse Emily Grace recalls how refrigerated trailers were put in her unnamed New York City hospital’s parking lot to accommodate patients’ dead bodies in March 2020; she also discusses how she strove to protect her family members, including effectively isolating herself from them for two months. Nurse Leah Churchill describes her choice to enter the danger zone in New York after seeing the desperation of health care workers on the news from her home in Florida. Over the course of the book, Delaney effectively highlights the roles shame, guilt, and negativity played in health care workers’ lives and the importance of conversations among peers to help deal with trauma. His own personal history with PTSD, and his willingness to speak about it openly, will likely encourage others in similar situations to work toward healing. However, the author relies mostly on his own personal experience as a reference in his analysis of PTSD in medical workers; expertise and data from experts in the field would have given the self-help aspects of this work more weight.

An eye-opening work about health care workers’ sacrifices and burdens.