Someone Needs to Show Up for Them

By Larissa Stenzel-Loucks 5/11/25

One thing that has changed mentally for me has been reconciling, knowing that a lot of my patients have voted for Trump and what he stands for and what his current party stands for, and yet still loving them and caring for them just as much as I do for any of my other patients.

I mostly identify as queer and I'm currently married to a woman.There are days it's fairly frequent that patients will ask me about little things at home. Often they'll ask, "Are you married?" and I kind of have to pause and think, "Am I comfortable sharing that I'm married to a woman or do I just kind of hold my tongue? Most of the time I do correct people. I still don't feel so uncomfortable that I'm going to just sit through it and not say anything. But occasionally, I don't know what it is, but I'll just have the sense that, "No, I don't feel like this is the person to talk with about being queer," and I just kind of let it let it ride that when they assume that I'm married to a man instead of a woman. If I do have someone who I sense is queer or I'm pretty sure is queer, at least I feel like I can connect in a better way. Um, like when I've had a trans patient here or there recently, I'm extra extra careful to just really try to be sensitive to their pronouns and address them correctly. If I notice a caretaker interacting with them who may not get their pronouns correctly, I'll try to correct them, and be like, "No, they go by she or they. It is important to recognize who this person really is.” It’s also just important to be aware of hormones or things like that that might affect other meds that we're giving.

I wish more people understood how emotionally taxing it can be, even working with the family members, not just the patients. Sometimes they can be a little difficult to work with because they're very stressed and going through a very rough time, which I get, but sometimes I wish they understood that I am also extremely emotionally and physically taxed and I'm doing my absolute best for them and my other patient.

I need them to know I do have at least one more patient, if not two, and I'm doing my best to take care of your loved one as well as the other people that I'm tasked with taking care of. I am exhausted when I come home from work. I work 12 and a half hour days. And usually work three days in a row. After those three day stretches, I am exhausted when I come home, and I'm exhausted each night when I come home. Even on a day after I've worked, I often just want to sleep in really late and not do anything the next day. Since the election that my wife and I have been trying to take certain steps to to sort of prepare for the worst, and I don't know, in some ways it sounds paranoid, but in other ways with every day after day of the intense things that Donald Trump and his administration are doing, we keep seeing things that we didn't necessarily expect and so we just want to be again prepared for the worst, if something else happens that might impact us more directly. Those kinds of things take extra labor at home on top of also everything I do at work.

I also just wish the community understood better how to utilize emergency rooms vs urgent care vs primary care. And I do understand part of this is a socio-political issue because some people who don't have enough money to afford going to the doctor regularly end up so sick that they end up in the emergency room. Our emergency room is so constantly overloaded that there are patients in beds in the hallways, and patients sitting in chairs waiting for a bed, and patients waiting too long in the waiting area in the ER and not getting as good of care as they deserve. Although our ER nurses are fantastic, they just don't have the space or time for all of them. I think there's certain types of patients that come in that really could have just gone to urgent care instead of ER. I just wish that we could all agree that everybody deserves affordable healthcare.

It just feels so hard going into work every day and acting like everything's okay. Even though it feels like the world is falling apart. Like the political situation is ridiculous in a way that I never expected it to be in our lifetime, you're just expected to show up to work and act like everything's normal. I've had days where I'm just depressed or anxious, but I still have to go to work because it still matters very much. I really need to be there for my patients. The actual work itself hasn't changed that much other than seeing people watch Fox News or spewing certain little bits of hate here or there, but just the feeling that I still have to keep going and go into work and also not know even of my coworkers who is really safe to talk with- it just feels more lonely. 

I know that my patients and their families need me. And I don't mean that in an egotistical way, but just like someone needs to show up for them. They're very sick. I work in critical care. And when we are short-staffed the patients aren't going to get as quality of care. It’s important for me to be not just present physically, but present emotionally and mentally because it is a very emotional and mentally taxing job. Number one, I need to emotionally show up for the patients who are conscious enough to need emotional support, and number two, I need to show up emotionally for the family members. Again, whether I agree with their politics or not, I need to be there for them when they're struggling with these thoughts of “Is my family member going to survive, first of all, and if they are, will they ever fully recover?” I feel like I can put aside any kind of politics and be like, "Right now, I'm here for you as a human being who's having a really hard time." Then on top of that, there’s the physical aspect, like these are very sick patients. I need to be on my game of watching their vital signs and watching my assessments of them to see if anything's changing that might need further treatment and might need um, needs to contact a doctor or make changes in my treatment for them. I really do care about my patients. I really do care about what I'm doing, and I feel like my work has meaning when I go into work every day. I feel like right now if I had certain office jobs, going through this, I might just be like, "I don't even care. None of this matters." It still matters to me.