Make the most of every moment

laura visansay Nurse Santa Provença Care Home

BARCELONA — SPAIN

In the first days, perhaps the first fifteen or twenty, I slept in another room. I live with my husband and a daughter of 5 years old. I started to isolate when I saw how bad it was.

To begin with, it felt like we were making sure the bug didn’t get into our care home and we were happy. Then one case arose and then we had an outbreak. We couldn’t understand how it could have got in when we had been preparing for a week but of course just the weekend before we had had families over and they had been in contact with the residents and auxillaries. A week earlier, we weren’t using ppe equipment and of course, that was when the infections started.

What the press were saying about the Care Homes was hard to accept, because from the inside, we knew all the effort and the dedication of all the staff. Once I remember saying: I don’t watch the news any more, or read the newspapers, because it just gets me down.

Now, in August, after months of it, everything is more complicated. I’ve had holidays, but I found that I didn’t want to come back, because I didn’t know if I was ready to go through it all again. But then you think about the residents again and know you have to be strong and keep going, and then you do, so that you can be on top of things.

I think everything we have been through makes you value life and make the most of every moment. All of us have tended to live very rushed lives.

After this, I think we will have to put in certain protection and hygiene measures. We know the nature of the beast now, and there may be others, so we need to protect life.�