I’m A Former Nurse With a Moral Dilemma; Returning in Time of Pandemic

I haven't worked in health care for 21 years. I left for an industry that I loved more and never regretted that decision, but when the Governor of Illinois issued a clarion call for retired doctors and nurses to consider coming back to assist our state’s overburdened and exhausted medical community, I contacted the Department of Professional Regulation in hopes of reinstating my license.

I started my career as an Oncology nurse, then as an executive in long-term care. I have held the hands of my fellow humans through their deaths. I have watched my own parents die, one of lung cancer the other of pneumonia. Those deaths, like a slow drowning were silent, hopeless, and agonizing to watch, much like the victims of this pandemic.

My parents and my former patients had family to comfort them, tradition to bury them, and community to console the loved ones left behind. The most critical of this pandemic would die without a loved one holding their hand and those same loved ones would have to grieve in this new pandemic community structure of virtual sympathy and love. Our medical community would be called upon to push beyond what’s humanly possible and to make impossible choices about people’s lives. I knew that later in this pandemic, after the world could stop for a moment and take a breath, that we would all need to deal with the physical and mental toll it had taken on all of their lives. The thought of all of it broke my heart.

I left healthcare to work in technology. Now, in this 2020 Covid19 pandemic my worlds are colliding.  Technology and innovation are critical to our success in getting through this, but the front-line warriors play the most important part in this struggle.

 I may have left nursing for technology, but nursing never left me. 

Over the course of these last 21 years the instinct to help has never left me. I have stopped at accident sites to help victims, performed the Heimlich maneuver in restaurants, and assisted people on the train through seizures, vomiting and other injuries as we waited for medical assistance. When my own Father was dying from cancer, I took him home to Ireland  stocked with medications and oxygen tanks. On our way back to Chicago, a six month old who had suffered a mild head injury weeks before, turned blue and stopped breathing. The flight attendant grabbed me thinking I was my Father’s nurse and for the remaining 3 hours of that flight I took vitals, kept that baby awake, kept it breathing. I have never stopped to think about helping others in a time of need. Why would I stop now?

I’ve watched the number of people infected with Covid19 in the United States increase every day from our first reported cases on January 14th to the one hundred and eighty thousand plus of today.  I have watched my own city of Chicago go from school closings, work from home, and social distancing to a full shelter at home order. I have also watched the healthcare community and my friends within it posting desperate pleas for help. Our city has an extraordinary hospital system that was being brought to its knees. Pictures of masks, worn for 12 hours were being placed into brown paper bags for reuse the next 12 hour day. Hotels and convention centers were being turned into makeshift hospitals, doctors. Nurses across the city were begging people to stay at home while our state government leadership was furiously working to secure more test kits, swabs, masks, gowns, and ventilators.

As an operations executive for tech companies, I often talk about my nursing experience being the foundation of my success. As a nurse or an operator, I’m asked to triage and problem solve quickly, pay attention to the details and the data, develop processes, understand logistics. I’m also asked to be self-aware and empathetic. The only difference between them is that one is saving companies and the other is saving lives. At this critical time in our country, saving lives is all that matters and I know I could have a deeper impact, somewhere.

I’m posting updates to help my business community and my friends in the bar and restaurant industry survive.  I’m posting mask-making groups, medical updates and yes, I’m posting my deep frustration with our National leadership’s lack of cohesive and consistent direction.  I started posting poetry and dishes I’m cooking as signs of love and comfort. I’m offering notary services on my front porch. I know how fortunate I am to be able to work from home while tens of thousands of first responders and healthcare workers can’t. They are on the front lines of this battle everyday, asked to be warriors without weapons. Florence Nightingale said, “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.” They were fearless. Could we all be that fearless?

My Uncles fought in WWII, My Father in Korea. My brother and my friends had served. This pandemic, a literal war with an invisible enemy will call each and every one of us to serve in one way or another and all  I know is that I want to serve in a more impactful way. 

The decision is not an easy one.  People like me are problem solvers. We are called to help, to comfort, to fix things instinctively, but I am in my fifties, I have a family, and my immune system is compromised. I have a family member who is immunocompromised.  I am morally torn and the feeling is overwhelming. I can’t even imagine what every nurse, doctor, respiratory therapist, EMT and other front line professional feels like. I imagine it feels like they're drowning too.

I have lived through the 1987 and 2008 financial crisis, 9/11 and scores of other national tragedies.  I worked in healthcare during the AIDS crisis as Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush led with various degrees of failure and success. I witnessed the work of Bill Clinton with West Nile, George W. Bush with Anthrax and Barack Obama with Ebola. Now, it was Donald J. Trump with Covid19. 

Since January I have watched the President dismiss the urgency, tell us he had it under control and that it would disappear quickly. The four to five week delay of national action has broken us. It’s broken our healthcare systems and other infrastructures that were never built for a national response. A World Health Organization (WHO) official said weeks ago that the United States had the potential of becoming the new epicenter of the Coronavirus crisis and it has. My state will be sheltering through April and other states will just be at the beginning of feeling the impact. This national crisis will get worse before it gets better. 

My family is concerned about my return and rightfully so. They love me and I love them. I would do anything to protect them and if this happened, I would need to live away from them. My daughter who’s in healthcare told me “it was risky and dangerous” and reminded me of my own compromised immune system. My son who works in tech said he “worried about my safety” and “was concerned”, but that he would “never stop me from assisting the greater good.” Both are correct.

It’s a long shot and I may never get approved. I may just need to continue contributing in smaller ways, watching from afar as I weep with a nation in mourning.