Nurses are being applauded as heroes for putting their own lives in danger daily as they tend to people with this highly communicable disease. An April 2020 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that at least 9,200 healthcare personnel have tested positive for the virus. Kaiser Health News says that the true number of infections is certainly far higher. Keeping up with such a tremendous wave of severely ill patients can take its toll mentally and emotionally. A study published in March 2020 in JAMA Network Open of 1,257 healthcare professionals working with COVID-19 patients in China found that more than half reported symptoms of depression, about 44 percent had symptoms of anxiety, and 7 out of 10 reported distress. At the end of April 2020, an ER doctor who had been treating coronavirus patients in New York City died by suicide. On top of all these challenges, nurses have had to deal with a severe shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as masks, gowns, goggles, and other safety gear. The problem is ongoing — on May 2, thousands of nurses in El Paso, Texas, and around the country participated in a national event to protest the lack of medical PPE being provided to the frontline workers treating coronavirus patients, according to the El Paso Times. Aileen Connelly, 58, knows these challenges firsthand. As a nurse in a hospital in Staten Island, New York, Connelly has been working on New York City’s front lines. She has not only had to cope with the PPE shortage and a high influx of patients but she has also been sickened by the virus herself. She sat down with Everyday Health to tell us about her experience. RELATED: A Coronavirus Checklist: Prepare for the Possibility You May Get Very Sick Even if you were a nurse with no critical care experience, you were sent to units to take care of critical patients on critical drips that you had never seen before. This actually happened to me. I don’t work in a critical area, so that’s completely above what I and so many other nurses do. But we were just told: These are your patients.
How did COVID affect the patients you were caring for?
I had two patients on ventilators who were COVID positive. One was on six drips; the other was on seven drips — meaning medications that were keeping them alive. Patients were getting hydroxychloroquine and Z-pack (the antibiotic azithromycin) and remdesivir. We were told, “Do the best you can.” Patients’ lungs just fill with mucus so they become almost hard and strictured [narrowed]. The lungs can’t open and close like they should. That’s what sends them into respiratory distress. Then the kidneys might stop working, then maybe the liver. COVID really does decimate the body for a lot of people who get it. All different types of people are in the hospital with it. It doesn’t matter about race or age. I saw a lot of people in their forties and fifties doing really poorly, and I saw some older people who were hardly symptomatic at all. I was seeing people without comorbidities [other chronic diseases] in critical care. RELATED: What People With Heart Disease Need to Know About COVID-19
How did you get infected?
It started around April 1. I had a patient that was on a nonrebreather [a medical device that helps deliver oxygen in emergency situations]. My patient was on that all day and ended up coding [having cardiopulmonary arrest] and needing to be intubated [fitted with a tube in the windpipe to help them breath]. When you’re in a situation like that, you can’t keep your distance from the patient. You just have to do what you have to do. So we intubated him that night. We’d been putting our masks in paper bags and then coming back the next day and wiping them off; I’d been doing that for a week. Then I had this patient. I swear to God it was three days after that that I got sick. I can almost guarantee that’s why it happened — between the dirty mask and his secretions.
What were your symptoms?
It hit me at work with a headache like I had never known before in my life. I couldn’t move my eyeballs. If I moved my eyes, the pain in my head was just ridiculous. So I came home, showered, and waited to see if it would be better the next day. The next day, I had the same headache. It was now in my head and my sinuses. I lost my smell and my taste. It stayed there for about a day or two, and then it crept down into my throat, and then it crept down into my lungs. I couldn’t even talk. It was all in my throat. It was awful. I had the fever, the shortness of breath. I tested positive on April 3. I took hydroxychloroquine, and I didn’t feel that much different, but when I started the Z-pack, my head just kind of cleared. I don’t know what did it. After about two weeks, I started to get better, and I was due to go back to work as long as I didn’t have a fever.
Were you worried about spreading the virus to anyone?
Yes — my husband. Luckily, he tested negative. I was terrified that I was going to give it to him because he’s got lung cancer and he’s on chemotherapy. He has had a lobectomy, and he is missing a lobe of his lung. RELATED: Expert Tips for Coping With COVID-19 at Home
How was going back to work?
I wanted to get back because my godfather had been in the hospital with COVID. He works as a counselor at a psychiatric center so he probably got it from a patient there. As he was going on the ventilator he said, I will beat this. He turned a corner when I got back. He’s been doing well now and is on track to recovering.
What message would you leave people with about the virus?
I’ve been watching people protesting against lockdowns on TV. I don’t think these people know anyone who has had the virus. They have no connection to the virus. They don’t know how it feels. If they set foot in a New York City hospital, boy, that might change their mind. It’s so unfortunate that so many people can’t feel things unless it hits them directly. But let me tell you, I think it will hit everybody eventually — whether it’s them or someone they know.
