By Alexis Taylor
AFRO Managing Editor
Five years ago, the United States came to a screeching halt. As a new disease spread around the globe, borders closed, schools switched to online learning and the entertainment industry pivoted to living room jam sessions and online concerts.
Pastors struggled over the decision to close their doors, entrepreneurs sought ways to keep their businesses viable, but for one group- the nurses holding up the front lines- the decision was much more complicated: Should they risk their lives and the wellbeing of their family members to serve those in need of medical attention?
Five years later, the world is forever indebted to the millions of healthcare professionals around the world who responded with a resounding “yes.”
The year 2020 kicked off as what the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed the “Year of the Nurse and Midwife.” Though the pandemic had not yet begun when the theme was chosen, the leaders were more on target than they ever could have hoped to be.
“I first realized I was living through a pandemic when the news kept talking about massive numbers of COVID cases… hospitals were filling up…everyone was scrambling trying to find a mask,” said Tyrane Herriott, 59.
Herriott vividly remembers her experience five years ago this month.
“We stopped sitting next to each other at work. You couldn’t find toilet paper and there were discussions to close churches,” recalls Herriott. “I was very scared for my family. My husband had so many health challenges during that time– COPD, on oxygen– my daughter, multiple lung collapses; My father and aunts –elderly…everyday I was fearful I would bring COVID home and make them sick, or I would get sick and not be able to care for them.”
Herriott still showed up to work each day, even as the bodies piled up around the country.
“I felt that someone had to be around to provide as much support, knowledge and care as possible for the patients because we didn’t know much about it,” she said. “It was really
hard seeing so much death. [I] tried really hard to stay busy… working, praying…tried not to
think about it. [I] stopped watching the news…It was always sadness. Even thinking about it now I still feel sadness.”
WHO officials report an estimated 7.1 million people perished from COVID-19 as of Feb. 23. Americans account for more than one million of the lives lost in the pandemic thus far.
Back in 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported thousands of deaths each week. The week ending on March 21, 2020 saw 588 deaths involving COVID-19; The week ending on April 18, 2020 saw 17, 221.
As activity ramped up in hospitals and medical centers, the world came to a standstill. Each country had to decide how to combat the virus. In America, many found themselves restricted by curfews. Only essential workers could be on the road at certain times, depending on the state and intensity of response to the health emergency.
“My neurology group typed up our ‘permission’ documentation, so if we were stopped for being out we could prove that we were medical providers and had a legitimate reason to be on the road,” recalls nurse practitioner Chandra Hall. “This was a surreal experience– to be one of only a handful of cars on the roadways. Even the animals understood after a while that we had to stay inside. I started seeing animals such as a large group of wild turkeys resting out in the open because there was no fear of being interrupted by humans.”
Hall first heard of the coronavirus in late December 2019, when the disease began to spread overseas. By January the first American cases were confirmed. By March, the country was shut down. Life rapidly changed.
Though her journey to work may have been blanketed in an eerie calm, the early days of the pandemic offered Hall nothing but chaos as a health professional.
“COVID broke me as a provider,” she said. “No matter what I did, I was losing my patients left and right. I went home crying each and every night second guessing myself on if I did everything possible to try and save them…wondering if I missed something.”
Hall, now 55, says she “battled on” for her patients because she knew “they all meant something to someone, somewhere.”
“If I had to trade places with their loved ones, I [would] want to know that someone like me was on the front lines fighting for them just as fervently as if they were my own loved ones,” she said.
Like too many medical professionals across the country, the losses at work were compounded by losses at home.
“I lost several family members…two uncles, one cousin,” she said. “It was absolutely devastating to experience so much death.”
Hall decided to cope with it all by taking a two year mental break, she says, “because an empty pitcher cannot pour into others.”
Like Hall, Trilby Barnes-Green, a board member of the National Black Nurses Association NBNA, had to step away from the career she had built over the years. Barnes-Green became an RN in 1976. In 2020 she was working at a hospital and doing telephonic triage nursing. She was also traveling, due to her activity in NBNA.
“I was working two jobs, hearing things, but not really stopping to hear it, you know? My husband is a news connoisseur. He was in it. And he said, ‘Trilby, you know you’re traveling.’”
On a trip to Capitol Hill to advocate on behalf of Black nurses, Barnes-Green’s husband gave her and her travel partner masks and sanitizer.
“Looking back at that, several times we’ve thanked him. It was in February of 2020. Everybody thought if you were wearing the mask, you probably had something,” recalls Barnes-Green.
Within weeks she realized how dire the situation was– especially given her own pre-existing health conditions.
“I felt like I was too much of a high risk…I removed myself from the hospital scene,” Barnes-Green told the AFRO.
Though she stepped away, she knew she had to go back.
“The hospital was short for nurses doing that,” Barnes-Green said. She told herself, “‘Get in there and help! You know they have it as safe as it can possibly be.’ And so I did. I went back to the hospital to help get the vaccinations rolling.”
Since WHO leaders declared a global coronavirus pandemic on March 11, 2020, and every day since, it has become clear just how important nurses are.
In the past five years nurses have helped patients understand the virus. They have alleviated fears regarding COVID-19, helped people process positive coronavirus tests and dealt with conspiracy theories. And while doctors certainly have certainly done their part, the nurses that helped millions around the world take their final breath and beyond that- comforted family members left– behind can never be forgotten.
Today, Barnes-Green has one message to the nurses who had to take a break during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Come back!” she said. “We need you! You can always leave again, you know. Give a day– give two days– or come back to home health…to education. Come back and be that clinic nurse for students, because the universities need clinical instructors.”
“We need every nurse that left to come back,” she said. “That’s my message, really and truly.”
The post Five years later: Nurses speak on surviving the COVID-19 pandemic appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.
