Two nurses share details on their daily battle with the coronavirus pandemic
On the East Coast, Grace Schafer is in the thick of a surge of coronavirus patients. On the West Coast, John DeWig anxiously braces for that surge to arrive. As much of the country stays inside, nurses across the country are on the frontlines of a battle that most Americans only see at a distance, filtered through blaring headlines, sobering statistics and chaotic hospital scenes. DeWig, who has worked in healthcare for around 30 years, splits his time between two Los Angeles hospitals, working at one as an ICU nurse and the other as an ER nurse. “It’s eerily slow at the moment,” he tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “We are gearing up for the surge.” For Schafer, an ICU nurse in New Jersey, it’s the opposite. She doesn’t have a moment to spare due to the massive influx of COVID-19 patients. “You don’t sit, you don’t eat, you don’t drink,” she says. “It’s hard to catch our breath.” In addition to caring for their patients, DeWig and Schafer are understandably concerned with their own safety, too. And shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gowns and eyewear have made for a vocal rallying cry among nurses and doctors. “This is a war,” DeWig says. “[But] we don't need bullets, planes, or military stuff. In this war, we need emergency medicines, we need the personal protective equipment and we need our sanitizing stuff.” Before the pandemic, DeWig says, masks were used when entering a patient’s room and discarded immediately after leaving. Now they are being asked to use one for the whole day — a day that could involve visiting an infected room 100 times. To limit these visits, Schafer and her colleagues have become creative, rigging up IV poles outside the room by using under-the-door extension tubing and appointing “runners” to safely pass PPE to them. Despite the abundance of caution, both DeWig and Schafer report that fellow nurses have contracted the coronavirus. In DeWig’s case, a few were in such a serious state that they had to be hospitalized. “That makes it real,” he says. “It really brings it home. Like, wow, I could be next. This could be me, this could be my family.” Nurses have also absorbed the added burden of serving as proxies for patients too sick to physically visit with family members. And orchestrating phone calls and FaceTimes — each with a morbid urgency to them — is taking its toll. “You're trying your best to keep a brave face, but you end up crying with the patients,” says DeWig. “It is emotionally draining at the end of the day. It's difficult just to walk back to your car.” For Schafer, the breakneck speed of her work results in feeling almost desensitized. Between the intubations, extubations, and deaths, it becomes a blur. “The sad thing is... I probably wouldn't be able to tell you their names because it's just, there's no time,” she says. Even after a long, 12-hour shift, returning home has its own anxieties. For Schafer, she could potentially infect her husband or young kids. For DeWig, his girlfriend, also a nurse, is at risk. And to make things even more difficult, certain routines that used to provide comfort are now off-limits. “If you have kids, you know the moment they see you they will just want to come and run and hug you,” Schafer says. “And it's very hard not to do the same.” Thankfully, the rest of the country is rightfully applauding nurses and other essential workers for their life-saving, life-risking work. Schafer says local places have provided her hospital with food and DeWig says he hasn’t bought or made lunch in a week. “It feels good,” DeWig says, “when you see a spread of food that a company or someone has donated. It's a good feeling that we are appreciated.”
Video Transcript
GRACE SCHAFER: So, I mean, any ICU nurse has dealt with death, and sickness, and testing your morals and your ethics. And unfortunately, it's like that, but I'm going to say about 100 times more.
JOHN DEWIG: There's no visitors allowed to the bedside. So you're speaking with them on the phone. When they're saying their heartfelt messages, because they don't know if they'll ever see them again, by the end of it, you're trying your best to keep a brave face. But you end up crying with the patients and with the caregivers.
GRACE SCHAFER: Making parents leave their children's bedside, it's something that you'll never-- never get used to. Unfortunately, that's the world we live in right now.
JOHN DEWIG: We are gearing up for the expected surge, which is starting to trickle in currently. And I feel for all the workers out in New York right now. I hope it doesn't come to the West Coast like it is over there, because they are going through it right now.
GRACE SCHAFER: So right now we are getting hit with that influx that everybody keeps talking about, the surge that New York City is dealing with as of now. As an ICU nurse, we're trained to deal with obviously the most critical patients, the sickest patients. But when you have an influx of them without being able to even catch up, that's the hard part. It's hard to catch our breaths.
We don't get to think about it when this is all happening. There's just no time to. You don't sit. You don't eat. You don't drink.
Most of the people that we have that are very sick are under 55. It isn't just an old person's virus. It's not.
JOHN DEWIG: Tensions are high. And we are already running short on PPE supplies. If there is any aerosolized procedure, like say a breathing treatment, or something where it goes in the room, now it's airborne for three hours. Do I have a fear when I go in there? Yes, I do.
GRACE SCHAFER: The hospital that I work at, they've come up with a lot of great ways to limit exposure to staff, creating like an intubation team, taking IV poles, and taking them out of the rooms, extension tubing, we got like strips of extension cord. So we're actually never going into these rooms while we're, you know, hanging an antibiotic that takes all of 10 seconds. There's always a nurse on the outside of these COVID-positive rooms.
I usually wear a headset. We have a nurse right outside that door. And I could just say, hey, I need whatever. She can go get it. That would be our runner-- little things like that to limit the exposure of us continuously going in and out, and also saving the kind-- the PPE stuff that we have.
JOHN DEWIG: It's apparent right now that nowhere in the country is anyone prepared for this. This is a war. We don't need bullets, planes, or military stuff in this war.
In this war, we need the-- we need emergency medicines. We need the personal protective equipment. And we need our sanitizing stuff.
GRACE SCHAFER: If anything, more hospitals need to share with each other, not within just the state, but within the country, on hey, we dealt with that first surge of it. And this is kind of what helped us now. So I think the communication is very important as well.
JOHN DEWIG: I've seen my parents, but only from the street after I drop off some stuff to their house. I haven't hugged my kids. I could if I want to. But I don't want to, because I'm scared that I could potentially actually be positive right now, and I could infect them, not knowing.
GRACE SCHAFER: It can be in our hair. It can be on our skin. It could-- obviously, we could be contagious and we may not know it.
So having a baby and a toddler-- and if you have kids, you know like the moment they see you, they all just want to come and run and hug you. And it's very hard not to do the same. So I tell them, and he hides them, actually, in their bedroom. So I quickly run upstairs. And I take a shower.
People don't understand that holding a door for someone is too close. That's how quickly these things are transmitted.
JOHN DEWIG: We're like sisters and brothers in arms, because if you look at an emergency room or an ICU as a battlefield, you develop this really close bond. And then when you see one of your fellow battlefield workers struggling to breathe, and you know they're positive for the COVID-19, it really brings it home, like wow, I could be next.
GRACE SCHAFER: Yeah, we're doing it together. We have to. You know, like I said, it's about community, inside and outside the hospitals.
JOHN DEWIG: Thank you also to the community for our support. We've been feeling the love from our local communities. It's a good feeling that we are appreciated.
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