National Nurses United

I n the beginning of the pandemic, little was known about Covid-19, testing was very limited, treatments were experi- mental, and no vaccine existed. When Elton Smith, an RN at the Brooklyn VA Medical Center, contracted Covid in March 2020, he was consumed with the fear of dying. That same month in Chicago, Tanya Adell-O'Neal, an RN case manager at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, got Covid from her husband who worked as a nurse at the Cook County jail. In April, Merlin Pambuan, a veteran ICU nurse at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif., went from feverish to being intubated in just a matter of days. Three months later, Katherina Faustino, an RN in the Covid ICU at St. Rose Dominican Hospital in Nevada, got Covid and was afraid she would infect her 10-month-old baby. Here are four stories of incred- ible grit, determination, and resilience. Elton Smith, RN 3 Brooklyn VA Medical Center Brooklyn, N.Y. new york city was hit with some of the first Covid-19 cases in February 2020. "Patients kept coming in sick and no one really knew what was going on," recalled Elton Smith, a registered nurse in the operating room at the Brooklyn VA Medical Center. "Masks were only for designated areas. Our N95s were locked up when every nurse should have been issued an N95. We were prevented from wearing PPE until there was a state mandate to wear a mask." Smith was working in the operating room on March 11 when he felt a draft of very cold air. No one else felt it, which was odd, so he decided to check his temperature. It was 96.3 but he wondered if he had contracted Covid. The next day he went back to work wearing a mask but soon began feeling body aches and pains. He continued working for a few more days and then began feeling so sick he decided he should get a Covid test. He went to the ER at his hospital because he knew they had Covid tests, but they refused to test him because he did not meet the test criteria set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Back then, the criteria included fever, cough, and shortness of breath or recent travel to an affected geographic area. His tem- perature was still 96 degrees, so he went home. "I knew I was sick, but I still didn't think it was Covid," recalled Smith. "Initially, it was labeled an elderly disease so when it hit me, I thought it was the flu." By March 19, he was extremely tired and began having trouble breathing. Because he was denied a Covid test at the Brooklyn VA, he mustered the energy to drive to the Manhattan VA, where they ran every test except Covid. All the viral and bacterial tests came back negative. They only gave him a Covid test and a chest X-ray after he told them that he was a Navy veteran. He had served in the Navy for six years as a surgical technician and hospital corpsman. As soon as Smith saw the doctors' faces when they came back to talk to him about the chest X-ray, he knew something was wrong. He had already told them that he didn't want to be admitted because back then, Smith said, everyone who was admitted got intubated and died. "It was the early stage of Covid in New York and people were not surviving," Smith recalled. One doctor told him, "If we don't admit you based on what we see on the chest X-ray, you will die in 24 hours." "I thought I was going to die," admitted Smith, who had a severe case of pneumonia. He was transported to Brooklyn, which was where Covid VA patients were being treated. Once he was admitted, he was put on an IV and given antibiotics and anti-clotting medicat- ion. "I couldn't walk and I couldn't eat much," Smith said. "I was sweating so much the sheets were wet. My body aches and head- aches were constant. I couldn't sleep." Smith's fellow VA nurses were deeply concerned about him. He was still in the hospital on March 22, his 39th birthday, when one of the doctors assigned to his case asked if he would agree to go home 12 N A T I O N A L N U R S E What Doesn't Four nurse survivors of Covid-19 tell their stories of incredible grit, determination, and resilience. By Chuleenan Svetvilas

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