Hello everyone! Long time no blog 🙂 It has been well over a year since my last posting and I owe all of my subscribers and casual readers an explanation. The COVID-19 Pandemic has affected everyone on earth in different ways this past year and taken millions of lives. The pandemic has challenged me and forced me to grow in a new and hazardous environment and reevaluate if a healthcare career in the face of a health pandemic is all I had imagined.
Before the pandemic started, I had just been hired as a dietary aide at a local hospital. I was so excited to begin a career in dietetics and get real work experience in that field. I was hired in March of 2020, mere days before the first reported case of COVID-19 in the United States. My university canceled our in-person classes and evicted us from our dorms. The next thing I knew I wasn’t living in my college town anymore. I was back home in my childhood bedroom, naïve of the severity of what was going on in major cities like at my University and at my new place of employment.
I had made an obligation to my job, and so I found an apartment in the city so I could start work.
I was hired in March as PRN and started in June as a frontline healthcare worker during a pandemic.
I was shocked at what I witnessed in the first few weeks of working in a hospital during this plague, but it made me realize that a career in healthcare is one of the most selfless things you can do. I saw my coworkers risking their own lives to keep our patient’s safe.
Dietitians, dietary techs and dietary aides alike may not play an obvious role in this pandemic, but everyone is contributing to the health and safety of immunocompromised individuals by showing up to work every day at the risk of their own safety.
It is one of the most noble things I have ever witnessed, and made me realize the importance of what we do.
Thanks so much for subscribing and allowing me to share this experience with you. Next week I would love to talk about my struggle with my personal struggle finding out I have a nutrient defiency.
Come back next week to find out how to make the most of your mini-fridge!
-Allison Cook
Dorm Room Dietetics 