National Nurses United

in Fresno, Calif. After 10 nurses at her hospital tested positive for the virus, with three of them hospitalized, she made a tough decision to live separately from her husband, 13- and 17-year-old daughters, and 14-year-old son. "My two girls have bad asthma, and they have had pneumonia several times when they were younger, so their lungs aren't the greatest," said Spray. "I'm really worried about exposing them, because my younger daughter is also immuno compromised. It would kill me if I gave it to them." Spray said her fear was compounded by a lack of safe PPE at work, where in the beginning, nurses were told to care for COVID- 19 patients with just a loose-fitting surgical mask and goggles, not the N95 respirator, face shield, gloves, shoe and hair covers, and other equipment nurses need. Now she has an N95, said Spray, but Kaiser tells the nurses their masks will be "disinfected" for reuse, through a process nurses know has not been scientifically proven to be safe nor effective. "I think it's ridiculous that they can't give us the proper PPE so that we feel safe enough to go home to our families," said Spray, who waves to her teenage kids through their windows and sometimes spends time 10 feet away from them in the yard. The kids miss her hanging out and helping them with their homework, said Spray, and her husband is struggling to work full time while shouldering all household duties. "The way to get through it for me is to just keep working and taking care of patients because just sitting home is hard," said Spray. "I've never been one to work extra because I usually spend that time off with my family. But we will get through it; this is what we do, we take care of people." 1 Falguni Dave, RN, Chicago, Illinois until covid-19 hit Stroger Hospital in Chicago, registered nurse Falguni Dave and her husband had never been apart for more than 15 days in their entire marriage of nearly 25 years. Now, things are different; Dave's medical-surgical unit has been converted to a unit for positive COVID-19 patients from the local Cook County jail. After an exposure scare and a brief hotel stay, Dave is now trying to protect her family by living alone in her daughter's apartment, while her daughter lives back home. "Living away is very lonely. I already went through my breaking point when I just cried," said Dave. "I felt as if I was alone and I had nobody to connect with because I was by myself. The phone conversations are not the same as the conversations you would have with your loved ones, face to face, holding them." Along with her husband and two kids, Dave says she is trying to protect her 73-year-old mother-in-law. And that's harder to do, according to Dave, when Stroger was initially telling nurses to reuse N95s for weeks at a time—a dangerous practice the nurses fought back against and won, through the power of their union. And they also had to fight to maintain an adequate supply of gowns. "If I had the appropriate protections, I would probably not live alone," said Dave. Although she loves caring for some of the most vulnerable people in Cook County, and her patients regularly tell her how much they appreciate her, Dave says she doesn't feel appreciated or respected by her employer. "Nurses are not scared to take care of patients; this is what we signed up for," said Dave. "But we feel like we are in the middle of a war, but no one is giving us the protections we need." 5 Candice Cordero, RN, Bradenton, Florida "my son is eight, and he has asthma. I'm afraid to bring [COVID- 19] home to him," says Candice Cordero, RN, who recently spent two weeks living in a converted bus to protect her son, her 12- year-old daughter, and her husband. Cordero works in the progressive care unit at Blake Medical Center in Bradenton, Fla., but one day, she showed up to find out they were floating her to the COVID-19 floor. Cordero, a nurse of 17 years, said she "didn't get any training" before being sent to the front lines. She said her hospital educator tells nurses to read their emails and check their phones for resources, but nurses know a phone can't tell you whether you're putting protective equipment on and taking it off correctly. And Cordero said the hospital keeps PPE locked up. Cordero recently completed her 14-day self-quarantine in the bus, so she said at least she will be reunited with her family inside the house—"unless I get floated to the COVID-19 unit again." Kari Jones is a communications specialist with National Nurses United. A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 0 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 N A T I O N A L N U R S E 37

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