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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
FRONT-LINE HEROES | NURSES, DOCTORS, POLICE, EMTS
Salute to first responders in Manchester, N.H. CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sarah Aldriedge, right, and colleague
Craig Marshall and colleague CRAIG MARSHALL
that’s truly God’s work, right?”
“I lost count of how many times I repeated aloud, ‘I signed up for this. I signed up to save lives. I signed up to do whatever it takes.’” — ALEX SEXTON, ICU nurse and respiratory specialist
FIGHTING FEAR Front-line workers know they can contract the virus every time they report to work, but for many, the greatest fear is accidentally contaminating someone else. When ambulances began to arrive so frequently that dozens of COVID-19 patients crowded Ascension Providence Hospital’s halls, McGraw worried about the threat to his staff or the possibility that he would infect his four children or wife of 27 years. “It would slay me if I got her sick, so that weighs on me,” McGraw said. That weight can be unbearable, said nurse practitioner Craig Marshall, a husband and father of two teen sons. “I’ve watched my friends break down and cry at work,” said Marshall, a former Air Force flight nurse who served in Afghanistan and now works for Southwest General Emergency Physicians in
SARAH ALDRIEDGE
San Antonio. “I’ve listened to them on the phone break down and cry, and I understand why.” To minimize exposure, first responders and medical professionals take extra precautions to protect their families and housemates. They strip before entering their homes and disinfect phones, keys and wallets, keeping them in hot spots designated for contaminated belongings. Some have their spouses trail them with disinfectant wipes, in case they touch a light switch before they have a chance to shower. They sleep in the basement, garage or even a closet. They don’t hug their children. They take their temperature multiple times a day. And if they sneeze even once, they wonder: “Do I have it?”
SELF-QUARANTINE IN A TRAILER Sarah Aldriedge, an intensive care nurse at Lake Granbury Medical Center in Granbury, Texas, called her husband after she treated her first COVID-19
patient because she knew she needed to self-isolate: Set up the family’s travel trailer in the driveway, she told him. But she didn’t anticipate the emotional toll of living alone for weeks during the most stressful time of her life. Aldriedge wore the same N95 mask for the first few days, storing it in a paper bag between shifts. She worried that the gown she’d been provided wouldn’t protect her; designed for the Ebola outbreak, its label indicated that the garment’s effectiveness expired in 2014. Trying to save multiple critically ill patients at once was more stressful than the mortar attacks she weathered during her time in Afghanistan, said Aldriedge, a former Air Force first lieutenant who served overseas in 2011. Making it worse: She’d return to the trailer after work and watch her two children walk past her window and down the driveway, just out of reach. CONTI NUED