THE STIGMA OF BEING A VICTIM OF COVID-19

A radiographer’s startling account of how she was treated with fear and suspicion after testing positive

THEY’VE been hailed as Ireland’s heroes, the frontline in our battle against Covid19. We’ve clapped for them and lit a candle for them. We got take-aways delivered to the hospitals at the height of the pandemic and we sent them to the top of the queue when they went to the shops.

They have deserved all of it, and more. The most recent figures showed that of the 26,220 Covid-19 cases reported in Ireland, up to the 18 July, 8,405 were healthcare workers, that’s just over 32%. And while the HSE classifies a health care worker as anyone who works in a healthcare facility, including cleaning and household staff, it can feel, at times, that the bulk of our gratitude has been directed at the doctors and nurses who have watched over our loved ones in the ICU or on the Covid wards.

However, there are a myriad of healthcare professionals who have put themselves on the ‘frontline’ every day over the last four months. The physiotherapists who must teach Covid patients how to help make their lungs strong again, the radiographers who must x-ray anyone who shows any sign of respiratory issues.

And they have paid the price for doing their jobs. Large swathes of staff have been infected at hospitals around the country, for instance in Cavan where at one point more than 25 physiotherapists had to self-isolate, after at least ten of them were infected.

Those who have fallen ill with the virus have suffered, like the rest of the lay population, to varying degrees. Most were off for just a few weeks, few were hospitalised. Others, however, were badly affected and are still feeling the physical repercussions several months later. But there is also the impact that Covid-19 has had on the mental health of our healthcare workers. The trauma they suffered working with patients dying from the disease is an obvious one. However, there has been another, more insidious impact that few are talking openly about. The isolation that some are experiencing within their own families, communities and circles of friends, shunned because of the job that they do.

Some are now finding, since lockdown lifted, that there are people who are so afraid of catching the virus that they don’t want to spend any time, in any circumstances, in their company.

The Irish Daily Mail spoke to one radiographer, a woman in her 40s, who was one of the first people to catch Covid-19 back in March. Apart from some colleagues, close friends and family, she has decided not to tell anyone else she was sick as she believes there is a ‘huge stigma that no one is talking about.’

For although she has recovered and returned to work, her life is now very far from what it once was. There are friends and family who avoid her, neighbours who openly fear being around her, all adding to the Post Traumatic Stress she has experienced since being ill.

And she says she’s not the only one of her colleagues to feel this way. This is her story:

‘If you were to ask me what was worse, actually getting sick, the guilt and isolation I felt during it, or the stigma of having had Covid-19, which I’m now experiencing, I’d say, without hesitation, that the stigma has been worse than the disease itself.

‘A couple of my colleagues got very ill, and are still recovering, so I’m not sure it’s the same for them. But for the rest of the people I work with, I think if you were to dig deep enough a lot of them have had the same experience as me.

‘I got sick in March, there was no temperature, just a slight shortness of breath that I didn’t even notice, someone else who pointed it out. I just didn’t feel right and there was a little bit of a head cold.

‘About half the radiography staff at our hospital were out at one point, not everyone was infected but because there were positive cases, a lot of people had to stay out and selfisolate. It’s impossible to do social distancing in our job, you just can’t. You’re lifting patients on and off beds, on and off the scanners.

‘It was a very confusing time. The word from China then was that when you got sick, it lasted for around 14 days. But it was day 18 that my cough was the worst, I got a fright and there was a point I was wondering if I was ever going to shake it.

‘I wasn’t hospitalised, I possibly should have been but I didn’t want to be. I wasn’t affecting anyone at home. I live with a housemate and we kept to our own parts of the house, we were very careful about that.

‘Towards the end of the third week I started having gastric issues and then there was the fatigue, I’d feel fine but if I walked upstairs to my room, my legs would go from under me, the whole thing was so strange.

‘I actually got such a shock when I got the positive result and realised how many people I’d been in touch with. That’s a huge part of it all, the guilt and the worry until you find out that everyone else is ok.

‘I was out from work for a month. There were so many mixed emotions when I went back. There was the worry for a start, I felt well enough to go back, but there was no proper idea of if you were immune or not. And so I was worried I’d be asked to do a lot of the portable work, going to the Covid patients on the wards because everyone would think I was immune.

‘In fairness the hospital didn’t do that, they actually protected me a bit. They were worried about me and the others who had got it, so they spread the work out.

‘A certain amount of people know that I had Covid-19 and at this stage I feel enough people know. And for me it’s definitely due to the stigma, the way I’ve felt that people have reacted to me, and that’s people who just know I’m a healthcare worker, not even that I was infected.

‘I’ve found it’s OK to tell a fellow healthcare worker because they understand it, but there are a large proportion of people in this country who still don’t personally know anyone who has had it.

‘About two months into the pandemic I asked some of my family who else they knew who had it, and they all said they didn’t know anyone else but me. I was really shocked at that. But then, I know plenty of people because I’m a healthcare worker.

‘I also feel there is a huge misunderstanding out there about Covid19, and people are even more afraid of it because it’s been reported that immunity is not guaranteed if you’re infected.

‘The guy who lives with me, his girlfriend lives at home with her family and her brother didn’t want him in the house because he lives with a healthcare worker. Some people are very fearful of us, and then of course there are the others who have gone the other way, they won’t wear masks and think people are overreacting.

‘There are plenty of examples at my hospital where colleagues have found they’re being treated differently outside work. People are nervous, but for us the whole thing is completely isolating, there’s no doubt about it.

‘I have a young colleague and she was telling us in the staff room a week or so ago that she was disinvited to a night out with a small group of her friends and it was because of her job.

‘Or another lovely young woman I work with, I can just see how it’s been affecting her. She couldn’t go home for months and months, and now her father still doesn’t want her back in the house. Not in a bad way, it’s just because they’re afraid because she works in a hospital.

‘She couldn’t go home for months’ ‘Some people are very fearful of us’

‘There’s definitely a stigma but I don’t think people are talking about it, nobody wants to admit that it’s there. Even in my home village, there’s a woman who had Covid-19. She works in a nursing home. She stopped going into the local shop because the village is too small for people not to know — they were literally leaping out of her way and she found that too tough to deal with.

‘It’s sort of funny, but the shop put up the names of people who worked in healthcare, as a way to say thanks to them but then everyone was avoiding them. They didn’t mean it, but it had the totally opposite effect. But look, I understand what is going on. If there is one thing I’ve learned through this it’s that everybody is protecting someone other people don’t know about.

‘When I notice that so-and-so is avoiding me or didn’t want me at this-or-that, every time I looked a bit deeper I found it was seldom themselves they were protecting. It was either a child or a motherin-law, or someone else. There’s a fear there that if they get it they will give it to someone who is vulnerable.

‘On the other hand, there’s always a bit of ignorance around these things. When my housemate was finally allowed out for a run or a drive, he overheard our neighbours next door on the lawn giving out, saying he was “spreading the Covid everywhere.” It’s made life very hard for him and he’s done everything right and doesn’t work in a hospital.

‘For myself, the feeling of isolation is something I’m really only noticing only now. When lockdown was happening everyone was in the same situation, people didn’t have choices. That’s been the big shift, people are more free to do things than they were before, back when no one was being left out of anything. I’ve found that friends and relatives are avoiding me for sure. Friends who wouldn’t go for a walk with me, and then family as well. We were discussing it one day in the staffroom and it turns out that everybody was having different things happen to them.

‘I thought I was OK when I went back to work at first, but then, in time, I realised I was tearful. There were jokes being made about it all and I thought I was able for it, but I wasn’t. I’m OK now, a few weeks on, I joke myself about it, which then sparks conversation about how everybody is feeling it. And that helps.

‘The HSE has put on helplines for healthcare staff, but the mental health toll is going to be huge, it was sprung upon us so suddenly, we’d no time to prepare, the HSE definitely wasn’t prepared and the GPs closed their doors.

‘I find that older staff have an awful fear, naturally enough. Do people step back from you, knowing you had the virus? Yes they do, all the time. People are afraid.

‘I was on one night with a very nice guy, who was supposed to be lifting a patient with me. I noticed he wasn’t really doing it and afterwards we had a small argument about it. I asked him what was wrong, was he OK?

‘It turned out he hadn’t seen his child in a month, he was afraid of his life of getting Covid-19 and he’d be separated for even longer from his family.

‘There are so many factors in all of this and I don’t think anyone is talking individually to staff in hospitals and asking them how this is affecting their lives.

‘The stigma and fear, I don’t believe it’s a finger pointing exercise, it’s just a natural reaction, to be afraid. Most of people’s actions are out of fear.

‘One silver lining is that I do notice the patients are nicer to us, it’s very busy this week with outpatients and there have been a few more thank yous and acknowledgement when they’re leaving. They don’t give out about waiting, they just appreciate being seen to.

‘All of my colleagues who were infected, we take huge comfort from the fact that nobody died who got it from us. We didn’t make any of our families seriously sick. If you were to talk to any of the radiography staff, that’s the most important thing.

‘And as I said, I do understand people’s fear. I asked someone recently to go for a walk with me on the beach — they didn’t want to and I have to respect that. That particular lady is protecting her husband, who is vulnerable. But it is hard.

‘It took me a while to understand that every single person is doing it for a reason. I took it personally for a little while. And I didn’t feel I was mentally affected until I started getting teary and realised I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was.

‘I’m not ashamed to say it’s taken its toll. And I think that’s happened to a lot of healthcare workers, more than they’re admitting. But that’s the way it is. It’s a very strange time for all of us.’

‘There’s always a bit of ignorance’ ‘I took it personally for a while’