On the US front-line, near the Coronavirus global epicentre
KERRY’S healthcare workers at home and abroad have been rightly lauded for their astonishing, selfless work amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic – and one such person finds herself near the global epicentre of the crisis.
Nikki Sheehy, originally from Tralee, is an Emergency Department Technician and Phlebotomist in Cooper University Hospital, New Jersey. She also works for the Gloucester County emergency response.
Nikki, who has lived Stateside for 13 years, has worked in this Emergency Room for a year but finds herself in a very different working environment nowadays. New Jersey was approaching 60,000 confirmed cases at the time of going to print, while overspill from New York has also impacted her working life.
“Cooper sees approximately 300 patients a day, and the hospital can admit approximately 700 patients, but is currently in the process of adding another floor,” she told The Kerryman. “Once the curfew was enforced, not many people were out and about. So we weren’t getting that many trauma patients from work-related injuries, motor vehicle crashes, etcetera. We also saw a decrease in people coming into the ED for minor issues.
“This week we have seen an increase in COVID patients. We, on average during a 12-hour shift, see up to 100 suspected COVID patients. Our ICU is and has been at full capacity for the last two weeks.
“This week the army reserve deployed a tent in front of our ED, to try to limit the amount of patients we see physically and to try to limit the amount of exposure. The tent is really for lower acuity level patients who need minor intervention and can go home and recover from there.
“Each day is literally an unknown ground of what we walk into. We have patients who walk into the ED walking and talking and are intubated within six hours.
“We have seen that anyone who is COVID-positive and ends up intubated has been kept on a ventilator for a minimum of two weeks. We have a high rate of patients who are on ventilators not coming off the ventilators.”
The biggest struggle, she said, is obtaining PPE. Nikki explained that the hospital has run out of disposable gowns, and medics are wearing the same gowns throughout shifts. They wear a plastic poncho over this if visiting a patient’s room.
She praised local authorities for doing their best to prevent the virus’ rapid spread, but patients are now being transferred from New York, while others drive from New York as their region becomes increasingly beleaguered.
These are stressful times, but the COVID-19 crisis has brought out the best in community spirit here in Kerry, and it seems that spirit has transferred easily across the Atlantic. Fashion blogger and New York resident Erika Fox, originally from Glenbeigh, had recently posted online that she wanted to give something back to front-line workers, and it turns out that
Nikki is among those to benefit from this generosity.
“My brother [ Traolach] and his fiancée tagged my name in the post, briefly explaining what I do,” Nikki said. “I didn’t think anything more of it as that’s what a lot of people do on social media, but apparently Ms Fox reached out to my brother privately, and he gave her my home address.
“I received a package on April 10 at my home... Ms Fox sent me a facial cleanser and a facial cream.
“It was amazing. I instantly began to cry...Who was I to get this gift and amazing gesture when there are so many others who work just as hard if not harder at their jobs? I am just a tiny ant in this whole world right now, trying to just do my job to the best of my ability with the skills and equipment I have.
“I was just amazed that someone do would this for a complete stranger; to find out Ms Fox was then a Kerry girl who herself moved to the states just meant so much more to me. I haven’t been home for three years and miss it an unbelievable amount.”
Nikki sent out a thank you to frontline staff in Kerry, and cited her mother, as well as fellow
Kerry nurse Eibhlin Deavall, as inspirations to her right now.
“I also want to thank everyone who goes out and claps for health care workers, provides meals; gives gifts; makes masks, colour cards or anything,” she added.
“No matter how big or small the gesture, it makes such a difference to know people care and that we are not only fighting this fight for ourselves but we are fighting it for everyone.”