I work as a Certified Nursing Assistant in a nursing home doing 12 hour shifts. The job is quite strenuous and never ending. Today was a mess for a plethora of reasons like them taking our chairs away because it looks bad if families see us sitting down in the hall.
However, the worst of it was working in a closed off 84°F hall wearing an N95 mask while several patients had the heater's on in their rooms. Most of the day I was able to get through by taking my mask off for a couple seconds in between tasks. Going into the last three hours of my shift I felt so hot and there was nowhere cool to go. I also was shaky, no matter how much water I drank I was always thirsty and sometimes I felt like I wasn't getting any oxygen under that mask.
I ended up using my pulse ox, my pulse was 140 and my oxygen was 84. With a couple deep breaths my oxygen went back to normal but I could feel my heart beating so hard when I put my hand on my chest.
I went to HR and asked if I could leave the last hour of my shift. While I was explaining what was going on she cut me off and told me I could only leave if I got someone to cover because ” You know how hard that hall is to work alone.” I've worked that and other halls alone my whole shift and was just told to kinda suck it up each time. Luckily I was able to find someone to take my place and get home to take a cool shower and drink a ton of water but I'm not going back again. There have been so many times the administrative side of my company has been awful but this was the last straw for me. At least I'll leave the place with some really crazy stories.