Darien nurse beats COVID-19, returns to treating patients
Post 53 alum tested positive the day she was to get vaccine
DARIEN — For Darien native Emily Fawcett, the light at the end of the tunnel after nearly a year of treating coronavirus patients turned out to be one of her darkest.
Fawcett tested positive for COVID-19 the same day she was supposed to receive the Pfizer vaccine that would have protected her from it.
“I had a total breakdown,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The initial news of a vaccine had been welcome for Fawcett, 30, a floating nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and a former member of Darien EMS-Post 53.
Unlike many of her colleagues, Fawcett hasn’t had a reprieve from treating COVID-19 patients in almost a year. Those assigned other specialties were able to return to their respective areas of expertise as things quieted down. But as a floating nurse, Fawcett went where she was needed, and other than a few days over the summer when there were no cases, that meant helping COVID-19 patients.
Shortly before she was scheduled to receive the first vaccine dose on Dec. 16, Fawcett said she
had started to feel congested. She said she knew emergency situations at work had left her possibly exposed, but still the positive COVID-19 test result hit her hard.
“I was scared. I’d seen people die from this. What if I ended up on a ventilator and couldn’t say goodbye to my family? And the hospital needed me so badly right now and I needed to be out two weeks,” she said.
Her mother, Sharon Fawcett, 62, who lives in Darien, said she felt helpless. Like her daughter, Sharon is a nurse treating COVID-19 patients but at Norwalk Hospital.
“When she called me she was an absolute mess, crying. I couldn’t believe what she was telling me, on the day she was to get her first vaccination, she was positive,” Sharon said.
“I felt horrible, sad, scared, helpless to my own daughter. How could this happen after all this time? Why now? She was so extremely careful. It was hard to process but somehow not surprising given the intensity of this virus,” she said.
Emily quarantined for two weeks and spent Christmas alone as she recovered. She was fortunate, she said, in that she only experienced flu-like symptoms, low-grade fevers and body aches, and no shortness of breath or high fevers.
“I came back to work two days early. They really needed me,” she said.
“I’m so relieved she had a relatively mild case and has no lingering symptoms,” Sharon said.
Emily now has to wait to get her first dose, adding most people need to wait about 90 days after testing positive for COVID-19 to get the vaccine because she still has antibodies.
COVID up close
Emily has seen Lenox Hill’s COVID-19 influx rise and fall. In the spring, at the height of the pandemic, the entire hospital was COVID-19 patients. During the summer, things got quieter, with some days having no COVID-19 patients at all.
In September, after a quieter summer, a group of 15 patients from Brooklyn were admitted who all tested positive, she said.
“They arrived still in good enough health that I was able to talk to them and get to know them,” Emily said.
Things went downhill from there. Emily said the patients deteriorated to the point where almost all of them went on ventilators. In the end, nearly all of them, who were in their 70s and 80s died of COVID-19.
Emily went from talking to them and communicating with their families to helping them through the end of their lives.
As of the beginning of January, Lenox Hill now has four floors as dedicated COVID-19 wards.
“It’s gotten crazier with the numbers ramping up again. There’s a small group of us that have been here since March. We’re still here, fighting for my patients every day. Facetiming with the families and crying with them,” Emily said.
The 2007 Darien High School grad drew national attention in the spring with her idea of “hope huddles,” as a way to keep hospital morale up during the pandemic. She was featured in the New York media and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey for her magazine.
“I was on a text thread late at night with some of my ER nurse friends and they were telling me how they were literally having mental breakdowns. That it was the first time they had ever cried at work. They just weren’t doing well,” Emily said. “... They just kept getting sick patient after sick patient. We were getting 20- and 30-year-olds on ventilators. It was just heartbreaking for them.”
The idea for hope huddles is for the nurses to gather with their team every morning and hear the positive news around the hospital, such as the number of discharges and how many patients have come off ventilators.
“Just some good, positive stories to boost the morale a little bit,” Emily said.
With the rolling out of vaccines, Emily and her colleagues see a glimmer of hope on the horizon as well.
“We are so close to the light at the end of the tunnel. We can almost see it,” she said. “I have high hopes for spring and summer.”
Sharon said she will be very relieved when her daughter is finally vaccinated, adding the day she got her vaccine at Norwalk Hospital was “one of the happiest of my life.”
“Norwalk Hospital is still very busy with COVID. Unfortunately, I’m sure it will be that way for quite some time. We are physically and emotionally exhausted, stressed, frustrated and in disbelief we are still battling this full force,” Sharon said.
Emily said she’s feeling better, but is still exhausted — which could be attributed to working several shifts in a row with no breaks.
“But I know this is where I need to be right now,” she said. “I see the light. I have to be there for my patients right now.”
As a nurse, people often ask her opinions on masks and the vaccine, she said.
“I’ve always had my trust in science. I trust the scientists working around the clock. People question the speed with which the vaccine was unrolled. I tell them its likely due to the lack of normal red tape associated with other vaccines due to the urgency,” Emily said.
“I believe in science,” she added.