An emergency room nurse in metro Detroit posted a video on her Instagram, bringing to light her reality for the past 10 days and begging Michiganders to stay home.

“If you had asked me 10 plus days ago if it was going to get as bad was I would have told you no," she admitted. “You hear the rumors, you saw the trends but until you see it firsthand you have no idea what it’s like. And it’s truly frightening.”

She says things have gotten bad.

Mary works with the Ascension Health System and was called to the Southfield location recently on her first night off in a while.

"’Everybody's sick; they're intubating everybody and all these patients need help,’" she says she was told when she got called in.

"I would say upwards of 10 patients were put on ventilators. My patient took the last ventilator available in the hospital,” she said. "This is truly scary and nobody is taking it seriously.”


Like so many healthcare workers, she says resources look like ventilators, medicine and masks are scarce.

"This is actual real life in the hospital now. They give you a paper bag and they give you you your N95 mask – and this is signed out for the entire year.”

The advice on all levels of government and public health is to stay home unless you’re a critical worker or going to the store for essential items.

Mary has that advice, too.

“Heed my advice and stay home,” she said.

Ascension Health told us in a statement that they’re following the CDC guidelines regarding the use of personal protective equipment. We are taking proactive steps with our distributor and suppliers to ensure access to supplies.

You can read the statement in full below.

But it's not just Ascension. Many healthcare facilities say their facilities are almost at capacity. Beaumont and Henry Ford each said the same thing Wednesday.

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Full statement from Ascension:

Ascension Michigan deeply appreciates all of its care providers and support teams for their tireless efforts and personal sacrifices they are making to care for our patients, and each other, during this global emergency. The safety of our patients, associates and providers is our utmost priority as we all work to slow the transmission of COVID-19 and care for those in need.

Ascension Michigan is following the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines regarding the use of personal protective equipment. We are taking proactive steps with our distributor and suppliers to ensure access to supplies. We are arranging expedited shipments directly from manufacturers, assessing alternative products and taking advantage of our abilities as a national system to make intra-hospital inventory transfers when appropriate. Following current CDC guidelines, we have implemented conservation measures across our ministries in anticipation of further supply chain disruption over the coming months due to COVID-19.

Additionally, Ascension Michigan, through established incident command centers and a robust emergency response plan, is ensuring we are instilling best available practices across our sites of care regarding medical care management in the midst of a global pandemic.

As cases of COVID-19 increase, Ascension Michigan hospitals, ambulatory sites of care and clinics have postponed non-urgent procedures and medical visits in order to protect patients, as well as to preserve staff, personal protective equipment and patient care supplies. These system-wide strategies are designed to help ensure patient and staff safety, while expanding available hospital capacity. Ascension Michigan continues to aggressively respond to this evolving situation to ensure we are protecting our patients, associates and the communities we serve.