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because everyone else on the floor tested positive for Covid and they did not have his results yet. "I was afraid I would contract Covid if I stayed, so I agreed to go home." Arriving home in an ambulance, Smith was mostly able to isolate himself from his 80-year-old mother because his bedroom was in the front of the apartment and his mother stayed in her bedroom in the back. The main problem was that there was only one bathroom. He wore a mask every time went to the bathroom and afterwards would use bleach and Lysol to disinfect everything. He survived by taking 500 milligrams of Tylenol for the intense pain every four hours. "I still had body aches, headaches, chills, and sweating," said Smith. "I was in so much pain I could only sleep sitting up for two hours at a time." He also experienced such intense nightmares he thought he was going crazy. "I thought someone was trying to kill me in my sleep," said Smith. "It made me afraid to close my eyes. Anything hanging, like curtains, turned into a person, so I had to sleep with all the lights on." After seven days at home, he finally found out from employee health that he tested positive, which was no surprise to him. Once he began feeling stronger, he developed a terrible cough. "I couldn't say two words without coughing," said Smith who consumed 10 bottles of Robitussin over four weeks. As he was recovering, his colleagues at the Brooklyn VA held a press conference in early April to demand personal protective equip- ment and safe staffing. As a result of this pressure on management, PPE and staffing improved for nurses. Meanwhile, Smith's recovery process was very slow, and he is not sure if he will have long-term lung damage. Months later, he sometimes feels short of breath and he wonders if taking so much Tylenol damaged his liver. A recent test showed that his liver enzymes were slightly elevated. Smith went back to work on April 24 even though he still felt weak. He and his chief nurse representative and labor representative fought with managers to ensure he was not assigned to work on Covid floors; he did not want to risk getting infected again. Now he is happy to be back working in the OR. He would describe his health as being 80 percent of what it was before he got Covid. "Some days I feel faint," said Smith who has started jogging again. "I'm not the same person I was before Covid, but I'm trying to keep myself fit and regain my health." 7 Tanya Adell-O'Neal, RN John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County Chicago, Ill. when covid patients began trickling into John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital in Chicago in March, Tanya Adell-O'Neal, RN, was con- cerned. She worked as a case manager, but she still did rounds, talking to patients and nurses, so she thought her risk of getting Covid was high. Also, she has asthma and only one lung; her right lung had been removed due to a benign tumor when she was a teen- ager. Luckily, her manager was aware of her medical condition and told her she could work from home. "I signed all my paperwork and started working from home around March 19," recalled Adell- O'Neal, whose mother lives with her along with her husband, Kenneth O'Neal, who is also an RN and works at Cook County Jail. By mid-March, Covid still "wasn't on the radar yet at the jail," said Adell-O'Neal, now 54 years old. Little did they know that one of the biggest Covid outbreaks in the country was already underway in the jail and would explode to more than 500 people testing positive by April 13. She has been a nurse for more than 30 years, including 17 years as a psychiatric nurse for patients at Cook County Jail. She said working at the jail was one of the "most rewarding jobs" in her nursing career because her patients needed her and she felt valued. Her husband, now 69 years old, felt the same way, which is why, instead of retiring, he continued working a few days a week. Adell-O'Neal had been working from home for 10 days when her husband came stumbling into the house from the garage, having just finished a shift in urgent care at the jail. As soon as she saw him, she knew something was way off. He was sweating profusely, so she took his temperature. It was over 103. She took him to get a Covid test and the following afternoon, learned that he was positive. Then Adell-O'Neal got tested with the same result. Although Adell-O'Neal had no fever, she had a persistent head- ache and she lost her sense of taste and smell. Her primary care doctor had prescribed steroids and antibiotics. She didn't have any respiratory symptoms, so she thought she was recovering. But nearly three weeks after testing positive, she began feeling a little shortness of breath. She thought she could go back to work. But the employee health doctor told her he was concerned about the sound of her breathing as they spoke over the phone and that he would check in with her a few days later. The next time he called, he was alarmed because he could hear that she was having difficulty breathing. He told her to go to the hospital. "I'd never experienced anything so dramatic," said Adell-O'Neal, who said she never got true asthma flare ups. "I never ever felt as J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y | M A R C H 2 0 2 1 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 13 Kill You