‘Carry yourself through it’
NM nurse-poet works on the frontline of COVID-19 in a New York hospital
By April 7, about the time registered nurse Darlene Sarracino started working at New York-Presbyterian Allen, the hospital in Upper Manhattan had already recorded 59 deaths due to COVID-19.
At times, as many as 170 of the patients at the 200-bed facility were being treated for coronavirus.
“Four of the patients on my very first shift at the hospital passed away (due to the virus) that day or the next,” said Sarracino, 26, who is from Laguna Pueblo. “After finishing that first week of shifts, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I was doing FaceTime with my sister in Los Angeles and she said, ‘You look rough.’
“I found a lot of comfort in writing about it. I find it easier to process the world when I write it down.”
Life and death
“Mami, abre sus ojos.” Their turn — voicing love and pleading with her to open her eyes. Maybe five minutes pass.
I turn the phone to face me — girl in the park is weeping, the woman in a cami, slumped.
That’s from “Life and death from bed,” Sarracino’s blank verse account of her experiences, primarily at Presbyterian Allen, but also in New York City outside the hospital.
The scene above describes a Zoom visit, facilitated by Sarracino, between a family of Dominican heritage and their mother, a middle-aged woman dying of coronavirus.
They all thank me for this call. I explain that I am going to start a morphine drip and that it is unlikely she will arouse again. Collective nodding and “please just make her comfortable” chorus from my phone.
“I am sorry. So sorry,” I say. They nod.
“Every shift, I have patients who are not progressing,” Sarracino said.
Walking thesaurus
Sarracino grew up on the Laguna Pueblo reservation.
“I was a typical, lame homeschooled kid,” she said during a phone interview from her Manhattan apartment. “In my high school years, I walked around with a Roget’s Thesaurus. I write poetry a fair amount.”
Sarracino chose nursing over a literary career because she felt nursing would make a more effective impact on people’s lives.
“I am interested in finding ways to help people,” she said. “I can do that in multiple career paths, so I have multiple ideas. Right now, I am content in nursing.”
She graduated as a registered nurse after studying at the Albuquerque satellite campus of Grand Canyon University.
She worked at Albuquerque’s Presbyterian Hospital from 2018 to 2019 before embarking on a stint as a traveling nurse. She was in Los Angeles when the coronavirus pandemic kicked in there, but she moved to New York’s Presbyterian Allen in April.
“I was one of 22 travelers that started that first day (at Presbyterian Allen),” she said. “It was gratifying that we were so immediately needed. But it was overwhelming to know what the medical staff there had gone through, that some of them were sick with the virus.”
In memoriam
Sarracino writes —
My proximity to the virus is tangible, but my attitude is not so
concrete. Some days I sanitize the bottom of my shoes every hour.
Last night, I walked outside barefoot.
And then later in her poem —
But I am scared, so I wear my face shield, and you are scared, so you zoom from your bed. What do we fear? Death?
“I think I’m scared because I’ve seen young people in their 30s, people with no other medical problems, get intubated,” Sarracino said. “Also, I know of medical workers who have died of COVID.”
The disease takes its toll in many ways. A 49-year-old emergency room doctor at Presbyterian Allen worked until she got sick with the virus, recovered and worked again, and then, during a rest break with her family in Virginia, took her own life.
Bulletins, “In Memoriam,” of a doctor,
dead — not by the virus — line the halls.
We play the Black-Eyed Peas’ “I Got a Feeling” on the overhead
speakers when a patient with COVID-19 makes it to discharge.
Sometimes I have the strength to clap, mostly I cry.
Cheers
Sarracino is scheduled to work at Presbyterian Allen until the first week in June, but said that might be extended.
“This last week, the rush of COVID has slowed,” she said. “We’ll see. No one knows what will happen. There
could be a bump (in cases) because of the lifting of restrictions.”
Despite the deaths she has witnessed at Presbyterian Allen, the grief she has shared with people she has met only on her phone, the numbing fatigue she has endured, Sarracino has found things to appreciate and admire during her time in Manhattan.
I only hear the cheering at seven pm on days off, and the bridge of
my nose is chafed — I hope it doesn’t scar.
It has become a nightly custom in New York City during the coronavirus epidemic for people to stop whatever else they are doing at 7 p.m. and audibly salute the first responders and medical personnel risking their lives to care for people stricken by the virus.
“Someone starts it,” Sarracino said. “Then, people start opening windows, and cheering and clapping and banging on pots and pans. It is quite lovely.”
She said she will miss the dedication and teamwork of New York health care workers, such as those she has toiled beside at Presbyterian Allen.
“I’m proud of them, from the people who clean the rooms to the people who serve the food to the administration,” she said. “There is a real feeling of community. They have people’s backs.”
When her time is done in Manhattan, Sarracino intends to return to nursing in New Mexico.
“I do love these grand cities (Los Angeles, New York), but my future lies in New Mexico.”
And beyond coronavirus.
Carry yourself through it. Don’t hold on to the bedrails.