National Nurses United

18 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 J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 had a mild or asymptomatic infection, who may not have taken a Covid test or tie their symptoms with Long Covid." In the best of cases, getting care for Long Covid is difficult. But not having a test that links your symptoms to Covid, makes it even more difficult. One study found that an estimated 70 per- cent of Long Covid clinics in the United States only accept patients with a prior positive Covid test. Chaudhary said that despite his debilitating symptoms, he wor- ried about how he would get health care or insurance if he were to leave his job. So he kept working after his first infection and second infections, even as he felt his health deteriorating dramatically. "After the second Covid, I couldn't even sit up," recalled Chaudhary. "As I sat up, even in a chair, both my arms would just go limp and weak. My family was feeding me for a week." When he was able to work, he struggled to manage multiple symptoms including fatigue, jaw pain, body aches, persistent GI problems, and tachycardia. "My heart rate would be like 170. My patients, they are admitted with 120, 130, 140 and I'm taking care of them with 170. And I did that for a year. I felt I was getting worse every single day, but I was scared of losing my insurance if I left work." Nurses and other health care workers are at an increased risk for Covid-19 infection due to the nature of their work and repeated exposure. Chaudhary believes he was infected with Covid at least three times. "Unless you have it, you don't really understand," said Mirasol Streams, a registered nurse at Emanate Health Inter-Community Hospital in Covina, Calif. Streams contracted Covid in December 2020 while caring for a Covid-positive patient on a BiPAP machine. After testing positive, she feared for her family's well-being so she spent four weeks in a hotel. "During my stay it was hard to take a shower, I was dizzy all the time, I felt like I was blacking out." Streams was never hospitalized and tried to go back to work after her initial illness. "My first night, I was a sitter for a traumatic brain injury patient, and this person was so confused, I had to run after him. But I was exhausted, I couldn't do it." She tried to continue working for several months on light duty, but that too proved too exhausting for her. "It attacked me from head to toe," she said, listing off just some of her many symptoms. "I have brain fog, I have shortness of breath, tachycardia, GI bleed." When she first went to a workers' compensation doctor, she said they were ill-prepared to deal with her case. "I think they were used to dealing with physical injuries," she recalled. "They didn't even take an x-ray. The care was very substandard." Chaudhary had his own issues with workers' compensation and trouble finding appropriate care. He said because he had no preex- isting conditions prior to getting Covid, when symptoms arise, his primary care provider says they are unable to see him, and he should be seen by his workers' compensation physician. But workers' com- pensation doctors don't have an understanding of Long Covid. "That's been another challenge: to find a doctor consistently," said Chaudhary. At one point he was referred to a clinic in Los Angeles to get Long Covid care. Yet he was living in the Sacramento area, some 385 miles away. Too weak to drive himself, Chaudhary had to find someone to drive him down and back every two weeks so he could get care. Both Streams and Chaudhary say they are angry that their gov- ernment and their employers failed to protect them when they were caring for their patients. "I was mad at everybody," said Streams. "I was mad at the govern- ment for not stockpiling PPE, when we had plenty of warning about all of this. I was mad at the CDC who kept fighting the nurses saying it's not airborne. They kept saying it's not airborne, you're fine. You're fine with a bandana, you can reuse a mask." "This was all preventable, if we had the appropriate PPE," lamented Chaudhary. Because he was working as a charge nurse and did not have a patient assignment, hospital management refused to give him an N95 respirator. "But then we were short staffed, [and] staff were having Covid at the time and they were calling in sick. So if they needed any kind of help in any of the isolation rooms, they were [calling for the] charge nurse. So I was going into each and every room without anything." By NNU's count, by August 2023, 501 nurses in the United States had died from Covid-19. Among the dead was Amelia Agbigay Baclig, a 63-year-old nurse known affectionately as "Mama Amy" who worked beside Streams. "She was very concerned about getting Covid because she was working on the Covid floor," said Streams. "So I and some other coworkers would volunteer if it was her turn [to work on the Covid unit.] People would switch with her so that she didn't have to." Streams said Baclig's death was devastating. Nurses were heart- broken that although Baclig had worked at Emanate for decades, "My heart rate would be like 170. My patients, they are admitted with 120, 130, 140 and I'm taking care of them with 170. And I did that for a year. I felt I was getting worse every single day, but I was scared of losing my insurance if I left work." —Shoharab Chaudhary, RN

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