Coronavirus - Halifax Health nurse aids New York hospital: I’m scared of what the coronavirus could do again - Daytona Beach News-Journal

When emergency room nurse Lauren Anderson walked into New York Presbyterian Columbia Hospital for the first time April 27, she was met with pure chaos.

“There was equipment in the hallways, alarms were going off, people running around,” Anderson said. “The doctors weren’t even intensive care doctors. They were dermatologists, psychologists and pediatricians all helping out.”

Every floor of the hospital had been converted into a coronavirus unit. So had the children’s hospital. And all four operating rooms had been converted into intensive care units, each filled with four patients on ventilators. Every patient was treated as though they were positive for the virus.

“It was insane,” she said. “I didn’t imagine it was going to be that bad.”

Anderson, 25, is an emergency room nurse at Halifax Health Medical Center. When the coronavirus pandemic began to overwhelm New York, a friend there suggested Anderson come help at the overrun hospitals in the city. She declined at first because she didn’t want to risk losing her dream job at the Daytona Beach hospital.

But on March 30, 10 days after Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended elective surgeries in Florida Hospitals, Halifax Health asked for employees to take voluntary four-month furloughs. Anderson jumped at the opportunity to take an unpaid break from her current job and instead get paid to help at the New York hospital that was struggling to keep up with patient volumes.

[READ MORE: Coronavirus: Halifax Health asks for furlough volunteers; some staff to take weekly days off]

[READ MORE: Coronavirus: Halifax Health furloughs 300 employees]

“In high school, I envisioned joining the Army but couldn’t because of a medical issue,” Anderson said. “I wanted to help our country in a time of crisis, this is a time where we can help the community and serve a purpose.”

As of Monday afternoon, New York had a total of 355,037 coronavirus cases and 28,168 coronavirus deaths, according to the state.

More than half the nurses on Anderson’s floor in the New York hospital have tested positive for coronavirus at some point. Some of them are still experiencing symptoms like the inability to taste or smell. Some still have a cough. One of the nurses is still sick a month after testing positive.

“We are not just here for the patients but to help relieve the nurses,” Anderson said. “They have been working relentlessly. I can’t imagine what happened here when this started.”

While it’s only been three weeks out of the eight she signed up for, Anderson is already feeling drained, both physically and mentally. On her first day, three patients she cared for died of coronavirus. Since then, at least nine more she’s helped care for have died.

“It’s sad that I don’t know what month it is. I hardly know what day it is half the time. I just go, go, go,” she said. Her last day is June 20. “Honestly I’m going to try to take a month off after because this is so mentally exhausting being here.”

Her worst day was May 12. She’d worked a 14-hour shift with no break, no food and only one trip to the bathroom. She’d been working alone, without the help of other nurses.

“It was so busy. In the situation I was in I couldn’t get a break,” she said. “I couldn’t help myself to help my patients. I didn’t get to change pads or give them a bath, the simple things in life that make you a human and that really bothered me.”

[READ MORE: National Nurses Week 2020 nurse profiles]

Living in New York during a pandemic

During her first few days in the Big Apple, Anderson shared a full-sized bed with the friend who told her to come help out, in a cramped apartment with three roommates.

But it wasn’t working out, so she applied for emergency housing and is now staying in a hotel off 39th Street, smack dab in the middle of Times Square.

“The first night I stayed there, there were less than 10 people in Times Square,” she said. “I took a picture and there was not a single person behind me. It’s like a deadzone here.”

New York Presbyterian Columbia Hospital is only six miles from her hotel. Most days she takes the subway to and from work by herself. But on days she’s running late she’ll hop in an Uber up to 117th Street; a 15-minute drive during the pandemic.

When she asked her friend how long that drive would be on a normal day in New York, her friend said over two hours.

On her days off from work she wanders the empty streets of the city. Businesses are shut down; there are no open public bathrooms; many public tourist attractions like the 9/11 memorial, Madison Square Garden and the Staten Island Ferry are closed off; Uber drivers no longer turn on the air conditioning; and the subways are closed between 1 and 5 a.m. for cleaning.

And there are cops on every street corner, mandated by the governor as the homeless population grew and became bolder, walking up to people and asking for money.

“I don’t regret coming here,” she said. “I would never have the opportunity to live here in New York or get to see it in a way no one else can say they have unless they live here during the pandemic.”

But she misses being able to step out of her Daytona Beach apartment to see grass, trees and the birds.

“Here I step out and there are buildings and pigeons,” she said. “I miss being outdoors.”

What she misses the most though, is her family, her boyfriend, and being home where it’s normal. She really misses being able to hug someone.

“I’m a very lovable person,” she said. “The disconnect and the physical touch that humans need isn’t here and that is what’s hurting me the most.”

The best day

“Celebrate good times, come on!” played over the hospital loudspeakers. A smile crept onto Anderson’s face and she and her fellow nurses began dancing.

On Anderson’s best day so far at New York Presbyterian Columbia that song played five times.

“They play that when they discharge a patient who had coronavirus,” she said. “They got to go home and that was the best feeling. We danced every time the song played.”

It wasn’t often that the nurses got to hear the song that brought them pure joy. To hear it five times in one shift was “incredible.”

“The people we see probably won’t leave alive or won’t ever be normal again,” Anderson said. “So we celebrate the positivity of people going home.”

But most of her days are not spent happily dancing as patients are discharged. It’s more often filled with anxiety and fear that she may contract the virus as she tries to help.

“The constant fear is there even though we have the proper PPE, everything I could ever need,” she said. “They keep us stocked on fresh N-95 masks everyday. But I see what it does to patients and I’m so in fear that that can happen to me.”

As Florida continues into the next part of phase one reopening, Anderson is fearful that more and more people will contract the virus and Floirda hospitals will begin to see more devastating impacts of coronavirus. While Florida’s population isn’t as dense as New York, she said the virus could still be catastrophic.

“I’ve seen them young, middle-aged, old and they all present in the same way and I’m scared for what this virus could do when the states and country open up,” Anderson said. “Patients aren’t leaving that I’m having. They are never getting better or going to live a normal life.

“I’m scared of what the coronavirus could do again.”