Americans reflect on hardship and loss from the pandemic

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• Amna Nawaz:

  As we approach the tragic milestone of one million deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S., we wanted to bring you reflections from some of the people we've met over the past two years of this pandemic, a paramedic, a nurse, a single mom, a sister, a daughter, a student, all facing their own challenges and carrying their own hopes for what comes next.

• Adam Bliden, Paramedic:

  I'm Adam Bliden. I'm a paramedic. I'm in Piermont, New York. And it's been two years, April of 2020, that we last spoke.

• Andrea Shiloh, Texas:

  I'm Andrea Shiloh, and I live in Houston, Texas.

• Dave Cayton, Nurse:

  My name is Dave Cayton. I'm a registered nurse. I live in Maple Grove, Minnesota.

• Lori Bebko, Pennsylvania:

  My name is Lori Bebko, and I'm in Bradford, Pennsylvania.

• John Meng, College Student:

  My name is John Meng. I'm currently a business school student here at the University of Chicago.

• Yvette Paz, California:

  My name is Yvette Paz. I live in Fresno, California, and I spoke to you in August of 2020.

• Adam Bliden:

  I don't think a single one of us was ready for the cost of working through this.

  It is a hard job to begin with, always wondering, is this going to be the one that gets me? Every little cold, every little sneeze is going to lead to being out of work, to being laid up? Yes, it's hard.

• Lori Bebko:

  My brother Charlie, who was developmentally delayed and autistic and immunocompromised due to diabetes, died on December 28, 2020, of COVID. I got COVID. I was exposed when he got sick.

  It's so much worse than people understand. I think you have to go through it to really understand it.

• John Meng:

  A day doesn't go by that I don't think about COVID in some way or another. And, oftentimes, it's really in relation to how it's affected my mental state, as well as my, like, physical body.

• Yvette Paz:

  I actually was one of the very first cases that was reported here.

  It is almost like I don't recognize myself health-wise. Yes, I'm thankful, yes, I'm grateful, but there also is a little bit of survivor's guilt that you get left with. You know, you think back, and you think about how many moms, single moms just like me, are not here, how many parents and grandparents and even children, yes, children, they're not here anymore.

• Dave Cayton:

  I started grad school, and I ended up changing jobs from working in the intensive care unit to now working in surgery.

  There were other reasons that I left the intensive care unit as well. One of those was just this continuing feeling of trying to do more with less. And this is a feeling that I know that COVID definitely amplified.

• Andrea Shiloh:

  I had been working really diligently to get my then-97-year-old mom vaccinated. She got her first dose of Moderna, and then, 30 days later, her second. I felt like I had scored the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl. I had this odd sense of freedom.

• John Meng:

  I'm a guy in my 20s, and I have never had to deal with this kind of like long-term, lingering disease before. The way that I am coping with it is trying to not think too far ahead, trying to just live my life day to day, trying to be as optimistic as possible.

• Lori Bebko:

  I have mostly spent the time trying to get well and to deal with my grief in a healthy way, because the day that it happened, when I came home, not only was I in the middle of this terrible grief, but I was furious. I was in a rage. And I have been very angry for the last year.

• Dave Cayton:

  There was honestly still kind of a feeling of guilt. I felt like I was kind of abandoning the other staff, and I mean the other bedside nurses, because I relied on them when I was working in the ICU, and they relied on me.

  But, ultimately, I kind of came to the conclusion that it's not worth putting myself at risk, putting my mental health at risk, my family's health, my wife's health.

• Andrea Shiloh:

  Sadly, my mother has since passed away, but not from COVID. And that was the thing, to get her through another year.

  She said to me one time: "I want to live as long as I can." And she did. She did. And so I'm going to claim this year as a victory.

• John Meng:

  I consider myself pretty fortunate to have gotten the COVID actually twice at this point, and that I'm still here. Of course,

  I feel like the disease itself has really wrecked my body and my mind. But I try to kind of find the silver lining in things, specifically that I'm still living, I'm still breathing, that there is still a future for me, although the future is very uncertain.

• Yvette Paz:

  To hear the number a million, it's just heartbreaking.

  If I were to go back to myself the first day in the hospital and say, hey, this is something that's real, and it's going to be big, I don't know if I would have believed it.

• Adam Bliden:

  Something told me in the very beginning of this pandemic that it was not going to be quick and it was not going to be easy. I'm not surprised that we hit a million.

  To think about one person who I know who died of this would be unfair to the rest. It's so much of a — almost like a blur, where the fog is still there, and normal needs to be reestablished.

• Amna Nawaz:

  In the days ahead, we will continue to mark this tragic moment and remember some of the people who have lost their lives in this pandemic.

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