There’s no question – there are so many great drama series out there right now that every night it’s difficult to work out which one to choose.
Last week however, my partner insisted that we should both venture into the ITV1 series called ‘Breathtaking’ . The series is based on a book by the author Rachel Clark, which is already a Sunday times top 10 best seller. If you watch just five minutes of it, you’ll immediately understand why.
Breathtaking depicts two years of Covid-19 survival from the point of view of doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, porters and managers in an NHS hospital. I found the drama incredibly uncomfortable to watch. I was left fuming and in tears during every episode and as a result, we didn’t smash this box set. I had to watch it with my partner on three separate nights, one for each episode.
I feel incredibly lucky that my 3 covid infections were managed at home. Although I felt terrible, I didn’t have to enter hospital and suffer treatments such as ventilation or CPAP, which quickly became critical equipment for patient survival, but impossible to find. However the problems with entering hospital weren’t limited to a lack of ventilators.
We all know from extensive coverage in the media that PPE was a huge problem throughout the pandemic. Healthcare workers simply didn’t have the equipment that they needed to take care of patients safely and keep themselves healthy at the same time.
Although I knew all this, although I’ve listened to many reports explaining the devastation on wards as people passed away without their loved ones nearby, although I heard patients became progressively more unwell when staff weren’t given any understanding of the disease, although I’ve been told that healthcare workers at hospitals tried desperately to save everyone and to give them the highest quality of care while admitted, although I’d heard doctors say they were given no plan, no information, no safeguarding and no appropriate equipment, watching the series made things much clearer. Disgustingly clear.
At the end of the second episode (which was awful, but I won’t give any spoilers) I was mostly frustrated over the lies coming to us every day via the television about the basic equipment these selfless workers couldn’t source. They needed basic items such as test kits, shields, gloves, masks and gowns to be readily available when it’s clear, in reality, they didn’t have anything at all.
By the end of the third episode my anger shifted from the government to the public reaction. People standing outside hospitals, putting themselves and others at risk, just to shout, threaten and spit on workers at the beginning or end of their awful day. To continue to work in such diabolical circumstances is beyond heroic. It would have been too much for me, even at my strongest.
If I can feel ashamed, if I can wish I’d done more, if I still look back at that period of our lives and wonder how on earth these heroes got through it, I have to ask myself how on earth the government collectively allowed things to unfold the way they did and (in some cases) believe that their decisions should allow for a celebrity lifestyle going forward? The shame of saying phrases like ‘let the bodies pile high’ when every single life lost had such value, and so many of them were healthcare workers dying in service just to help other people.
We all want someone to blame when things go horribly wrong, and there’s no question that the pandemic was a period where things went catastrophically wrong for the entire world. Sadly, in my lifetime at least, I don’t think we’ll ever find who is to blame. However, when the public were being told there is plenty of PPE for healthcare workers to use, and it’s abundantly clear this was a lie, some blame can be easily apportioned.
I felt ashamed that while these healthcare workers continued to try their best to look after everyone, however unwell and however risky, while they were separating themselves from their family and friends just to keep people alive, the best that we could give them was bashing pots and pans on our driveways once a week. I understand that the sentiment meant a lot, but as I watched the horror unfold in Breathtaking, I couldn’t help wishing I’d done more.
One of the things the series does beautifully (especially the protagonist played by Joanne Froggatt) is explain the heartache and desperation of staff on hospital wards where infected patients were arriving in their thousands and staff had nothing more than bin bags to protect themselves. But their dedication to their job, their dedication to their patients, and their dedication to providing excellent healthcare meant that service continued in circumstances that simply should never have happened. Their place of work at that time was wholly unsafe and totally unacceptable, and lets remind ourselves that although thousands of people died, many were saved thanks to NHS workers.
I’m sorry I didn’t do more to support them. The only thing I can say is that any healthcare worker asking for a pay rise to help with the cost of living just to get off the breadline when they spent 2 years putting up with this mess and getting on with the horrific task at hand, has my full support. They should have the support of the government too.
You can watch Breathless on ITVX. It’s 3 episodes long and each one is nearly an hour. If you’ve been through an admission during the pandemic, or you know someone who did, you might want to wait for the right time, or maybe leave it completely. I highly recommend it, but it’s incredibly upsetting and uncomfortable to see.
Imagine what it was like to live through it?!
Thanks for reading.
Creative Steph 