Issue link: https://nnumagazine.uberflip.com/i/1259846
I f nurses are told to reuse an N95 respirator for weeks at a time, is it still okay to hug their kids? Does changing clothes in the garage after work protect a nurse's elderly parents from exposure? As COVID-19 has become the new normal, and not enough has been done to get personal protective equipment (PPE) into nurses' hands, many nurses are asking themselves these questions and going to extreme lengths to protect their families. For some, the answer has been to protect their loved ones by living apart. From hotel rooms to RVs, here are just a few stories that embody what nurses are going through across the country. 5 Ketsia Glemaud, RN, Brooklyn, New York each mother's day, the moms in registered nurse Ketsia Glemaud's extended family pile into the Brooklyn home she shares with her parents, both in their 80s. Gathering around a table in the dining room, they celebrate over a big spread of carryout food that none of them has to cook. This year, Glemaud spent Mother's Day alone in a hotel room, recovering from COVID-19. "I don't think we have ever spent a Mother's Day apart," Glemaud said of her 22-year-old daughter Bijoux, who is now living back at home after her university closed. A registered nurse since 1996—and a mental health nurse at a Brooklyn hospital for more than seven years—Glemaud's world changed when COVID-19 struck, her unit was closed down, and she and several colleagues were ordered to "cross train" to work with COVID-19 patients on unfamiliar units. "Two of my main concerns were being thrown on a unit that's not my area of expertise, and, 'How am I going to manage not bringing this home to my family?'" said Glemaud, who noted the nurses were given less than two days of training for their new assignments. At work in the ICU, she was told to reuse the same N95 respirator all day, and after a few days, she felt chills and muscle aches—enough to get tested for COVID-19. The test came back positive. To protect her parents and daughter, Glemaud rode out her illness in a hotel. It was lonely, and hard to sleep, she said, nagged at by loneliness and fears for her health. Her heart palpitations were so bad one day that she had to leave the hotel to go to the emergency room. For weeks, her mother sent clothes and food to her through family members, and her daughter encouraged her to stay positive and build her strength to come home—which she finally did on May 17, just in time for her daughter's virtual graduation. Glemaud says protecting her family by living apart was "the right thing" to do. Still, things didn't have to happen this way. Ideally, her employer would have had a pandemic planning committee with input from every type of worker in the hospital, she said, so that they were ready for a surge and not trying to put together units at the last minute. "A lot of nurses, including myself, we were under duress," said Glemaud. "Not only because of the virus, but because you are being thrown into this unfamiliar territory and told, 'Sink or swim.'" 1 Rachel Spray, RN, Fresno, California to escape solitude and 100-degree heat in the RV she now calls home, registered nurse Rachel Spray will often pick up extra shifts on her COVID-19 unit at Kaiser Permanente Fresno Medical Center 36 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 0 Isolation Protocol Without safe COVID-19 protections, nurses are living separated from their families. BY KARI JONES