Nurse's take on the ‘How it started, How it's going' meme is a jarring reflection of this year

If you've been on the internet lately, you're probably quite familiar with the "How it started, How it's going" meme. While most have been using the viral format to map the trajectory of their relationships, professional gains, personal growth, or as a regular old funny meme, a Nashville area nurse used it to bring us an important reminder. Sharing before-and-after pictures of how she started the year and now, Twitter user @kathryniveyy presented an accurate and unnerving picture of what our healthcare workers have been dealing with on a daily basis.

"I love being a nurse. Didn't exactly expect to be a new nurse in the middle of a highly politicized pandemic but life comes at you fast and even in a pandemic, there's nothing else I want to do. Caring for the sickest of the sick is an honor and I treasure my patients," she tweeted. "It is devastating to watch people die when those deaths were avoidable and it's even more devastating when you watch them die the same way, time after time after time. It's devastating that basic common sense and decency have been politicized. Covid is a brutal disease and I wouldn't wish the worst of it on my worst enemy."

"Please understand that you aren't just protecting yourself, you are protecting the people around you," Kathryn urged. Speaking to Scary Mommy about her message to those still not taking this pandemic seriously, she said that if there's one thing people should keep in mind, it's this: "Healthcare workers aren’t the frontline, we’re the last line." The nurse also stressed the importance of all of us continuing to do our part to keep ourselves and our loved ones out of the hospitals right now when the healthcare system is already overwhelmed.

"There isn't any cavalry coming to relieve us or take our place if we fall, and things are only going to get worse," she said. "We will do everything we can for as long as we can to help as many as we can, but the public has to do their part to limit the spread of covid or the healthcare system and the people who work in healthcare will collapse under the weight of it." Kathryn's warnings are particularly important at this time when even those who took strict social distancing measures during the initial days of the Coronavirus outbreak have begun slacking off on precautions amid the holiday season.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has addressed the matter quite a few times in recent weeks, urging that the United States needs to reinforce its efforts to contain the coronavirus as we enter the fall and winter months. "My Thanksgiving is going to look very different this year," he said in an interview with CBS News. "I would love to have it with my children, but my children are in three separate states throughout the country and in order for them to get here, they would all have to go to an airport, get on a plane, and travel with public transportation."

"They themselves, because of their concern for me and my age, have decided they’re not going to come home for Thanksgiving, even though all three of them want very much to come home for Thanksgiving," the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases added. "Given the fluid and dynamic nature of what's going on right now in the spread and the uptick of infections, I think people should be very careful and prudent about social gatherings, particularly when members of the family might be at a risk because of their age or their underlying condition. You may have to bite the bullet and sacrifice that social gathering unless you're pretty certain that the people that you're dealing with are not infected."