By Lisa Gartner, May 8, 2020 Tribune News Service.
It was National Nurses Day on Wednesday, but that evening, as her neighbors stepped outside to bang their pots and pans, Maureen May’s mind was somewhere else.
She was thinking about a recent day at Temple University Hospital, where she works in the infant intensive care unit. In a blur it became clear that a mother positive for COVID-19 would need an emergency C-section. The second the baby was born, May had to take the child away from her.
“It was one of the most difficult shifts of my career,” said May, who has been a critical-care nurse for 37 years. The woman would not get to hold her baby until she tested negative for the coronavirus. That would be days.
“This particular situation here with the pandemic is actually one of the more extended periods of stress we’ve ever seen in a civilian population,” he said. “We may not understand it for a while, and it will have effects on people’s lives beyond the immediate."
Comments (0)