A number of front-line workers pay with lives to stay on job
Sonia Brown’s husband died on June 10. Two weeks later, the 65-yearold registered nurse was back at work. Her husband’s medical bills and a car payment loomed over her head.
“She wanted to make sure all those things were taken care of before she retired,” her son David said.
David and his sister begged her not to go back to work during the coronavirus pandemic – explaining their concerns about her age and diabetes – but she didn’t listen.
“She was like the Little Engine That Could. She just powered through everything,” David said.
But her will was collapsed by the coronavirus, and on July 29 she died of COVID-19.
Sonia’s death is far from unusual. Despite evidence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that adults 65 and older are at a higher risk from COVID-19, KHN and The Guardian have found that 338 front-line workers in that age group continued to work and likely died of complications from the virus after exposure on the job. Some were in their 80s – oftentimes physicians or registered nurses who cherished decadeslong relationships with their patients and didn’t see retirement as an option.
The aging workers had a variety of motivations for risking their lives during the pandemic. Some felt pressured by employers to compensate for staffing shortages as the virus swept through departments. Others felt a higher sense of duty to their profession. Now their families are left to grapple with the same question: Would their loved one still be alive if he or she had stayed home?
Aleyamma John was what her son,
Ginu, described as a “prayerful woman.” Her solace came from working and caring for others. Her 38-year nursing career started in Mumbai, India.
She immigrated with her husband to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where she worked for several years and had her two children. In 2002, the family moved to New York, and she took a job at NYC Health + Hospitals in Queens.
In early March, as cases surged across New York, Ginu asked his 65year-old mother to retire. Her lungs were already weakened by an inflammatory disease, sarcoidosis.
“We told her very clearly, ‘Mom, this isn’t something that we should take lightly, and you definitely need to stay home.’ ”
“I don’t feel like the hospital will allow me to do that,” she responded.
Ginu described the camaraderie his mother shared with her co-workers, a bond that grew deeper during the pandemic. Many of her fellow nurses got sick themselves, and Aleyamma felt she had to step up.
Some of her co-workers “were quarantined (and did) not come into work,” he said. “Her department took a pretty heavy hit.”
By the third week of March, she started showing symptoms of COVID-19. A few days in, she suggested it might be best for her to go to the hospital.
“I think she knew it was not going to go well,” Ginu said. “But she found it in her heart to give us strength, which I thought was just insanely brave.”
Aleyamma ended up on a ventilator, something she assured Ginu wouldn’t be necessary.
Her family was observing a virtual Palm Sunday service April 5 when they got the call that she had died.
“We prayed that she would be able to come back, but that didn’t happen,” Ginu said.
Aleyamma and her husband, Johnny, who retired a few years ago, had been waiting to begin their next adventure.
“If organizations cared about their staff, especially staff who were vulnerable, if they provided for them and protected them, all of this could have been prevented,” Ginu said.
In non-pandemic times, Sheena Miles considered herself semi-retired. She worked every other weekend at Scott Regional Hospital in Morton, Mississippi, mainly because she loved nursing and her patients. When Scott County emerged as a hot spot for the virus, Sheena worked four weekends in a row.
Her son, Tom, a member of Mississippi’s House of Representatives, called her one night to remind her she did not need to go to work.
“You don’t understand,” Sheena told her son. “I have an oath to do this. I don’t have a choice.”
Over Easter weekend, she began exhibiting COVID-19-LIKE symptoms. By Thursday, her husband drove her to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.
“She walked in and she never came out,” Tom said.
Tom said his mom “laid her life down” for the residents of Morton.
“She knew the chances that she was taking,” he said. “She just felt it was her duty to serve and to be there for people.”