Nurse battles in the virus ward; her dad worries

My youngest daughter is a nurse in a large Northwest coast hospital where she’s been taking care of COVID-19 patients for five months.

Last month when I heard there was a spike of cases in the Northwest, I called her to see how she was doing. Most of her new patients were young people who spent Memorial Day and subsequent weekends out with friends, ignoring social-distancing guidelines. Two weeks earlier, in the middle of June, her acute care floor was down to just two COVID19 patients, the lowest count in three months. By mid-July, her floor was full again. Many of the sickest patients were young men in their 20s and 30s.

Last March when her hospital experienced a critical shortage of personal protection equipment, I reminded my daughter that she had no obligation to report to work if her hospital was not providing a safe work environment. She responded, “Dad, that’s not what being a nurse is all about,” and I was reminded of the incredible culture of commitment that suffuses the nursing profession. My daughter’s current challenge comes from members of her own community who are getting sick because they refuse to wear a mask or maintain safe social distance.

When we talked last month, she was exhausted, angry and scared to death that she would get infected (as an asthmatic, her greatest fear is dying from slow suffocation). But she remained on the front lines because that’s what nurses do, and she didn’t want to leave her team in the lurch — especially her lower-paid colleagues: the housekeepers, janitors, orderlies and nurses aids supporting families on $8 an hour who can’t afford to quit.

But she’s on the proverbial horns of a dilemma. She asks, “How can I be an effective nurse when I’m so angry at these young patients for exposing all of us, their families, friends and health care providers, to this terrible disease?”

A few weeks ago, my daughter tested positive for COVID-19. She and her young son, also positive, are now quarantined at home, while her husband and daughter remain in the clear, for now. My daughter is sick, but one of her biggest challenges is trying to sleep with images of all the patients she cared for, some going home, others never going home again, and all struggling to breathe.

As appalling as the lack of national leadership is, and as sickening as the broken American for-profit health care “system” is, the biggest insult to these injuries is the behavior of an American minority who believes their freedom not to wear a mask somehow exempts them from protecting their neighbors during a global pandemic.

You know the ones. The people who think freedom comes free of charge, without any social responsibilities. They just want to be left alone to do their thing, whatever that is. We are a diverse country that harbors a wide variety of beliefs and practices, and that diversity, I believe, confers a measure of resilience in these troubled times — as long as all our voices are empowered to speak.

We will get through this disaster, eventually, and the American experiment will stumble on. I’m just glad my daughter’s grandfather, my father, who barely survived the Battle of Iwo Jima, is not around to see how some Americans today interpret the meaning of his sacrifice.

John Ware is a retired archaeologist living in Santa Fe. He is a former director of the Laboratory of Anthropology and founding director of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. His daughter and her son have since tested negative for COVID-19, but she continues to have breathing issues and joint and muscle pain.