“Difficult for the children.”
Youngermans are nurses at Centura-Littleton Adventist Hospital while raising two young kids.
On the best of days, Cassie and Matt Youngerman pass like ships in the night. During a global pandemic?
It feels more like Halley’s comet.
“It’s funny,” Matt said. “We actually were just talking about that. This past weekend was the first time in six weeks we had a full day off together.”
The Youngermans aren’t just a married couple — they’re a married couple of nurses. The pair have been waging their part in the fight against the spread of the coronavirus at the same workplace, but they’re almost never there at the same time.
Cassie, assistant nurse manager in the emergency department at Centura-Littleton Adventist Hospital, takes a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. shift three to four days a week. Matt, a charge nurse in surgical services at Littleton Adventist, works afternoons and evenings.
All this while also rotating shifts in caring for daughters Scarlett, 4, and Maci, 2.
“My saving grace, I would say, is when I come home,” said Cassie, who moved with Matt from southern Ohio about three years ago. “I leave work, and our girls are small enough that they don’t really have any idea what’s going on. And so I come home and I can relax, and they recharge me.
“Sleep was difficult at first, just trying to turn your mind off from all the things, but once I would fall asleep, it’s like the best sleep of your life, and then you wake up and then it’s like, ‘OK, I’m ready to do it all over again.’ ”
During some of Cassie’s 50hour weeks in April, as the COVID-19 caseloads mounted, those breaks were a godsend. Especially as — unlike Matt — she doesn’t partake in pick-meup drinks such as coffee or soda.
“My release is the same — the girls,” Matt said. “We were fortunate enough that the weather is nice to get (outdoors). And I play guitar, which is a nice release from having to think about everything.
“I think most health care providers, now that we’re (eight) weeks into this — I don’t want to say, ‘It’s more normal,’ because it’s not normal. (But) you know what you’re doing. It’s not ever-evolving, like it was with the first few weeks or so.”
If you’re a working mom or dad who’s dog-paddling through the quarantine, juggling the kids at home with one hand while managing a work-life balance in the other, the Youngermans feel your pain.
Now imagine trying to navigate all of that in a house where parents come home after hours of being in close quarters with patients who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus.
At the end of a shift, Cassie explained, work clothes go into a bag. And once she’s through the front door, the stuff in that bag goes straight into the washing machine.
After that?
“It’s children, difficult being for the 2 and 4, they don’t understand that when Mommy and Daddy come home, why can’t they run up to us and give us a hug?”
Cassie Youngerman
Straight to the shower.
“It’s difficult for the children, being 2 and 4, they don’t understand that when Mommy and Daddy come home, why can’t they run up to us and give us a hug?” Cassie said. “And why don’t we pick them up?
“And I tell them, ‘Mommy’s got a lot of germs on her and so she needs to take a shower.’ And they’re mostly OK with that. But it’s definitely changed the routine. You can’t just sit down and play with them and start talking about their days.”
Matt spent seven years as a firefighter before becoming a nurse.
He likens the preparation of PPE these days to the steps he took putting on his old gear en route to a blaze.
“Yes, you could put it on as fast as you can, but you have to make sure that everything’s on appropriately,” Matt said. “It’s basically the same mentality going into a COVID-19 room that I had going into a house fire. It’s no good if you haven’t put your gear on properly.”
Or had a chance to recharge the batteries. The Youngermans spent that rare full day off together “by doing nothing,” Matt said with a laugh.
“We had a pajama party all day,” Cassie said.