Hospital workers send kids away, live in campers to protect family during coronavirus
As the novel coronavirus continues to spread, doctors, nurses and hospital workers are taking drastic measures to protect their loved ones from exposure.
Lisa Neuburger, 37, is a nurse and mom to an 11-year-old boy. She moved out of her parents’ home and into a camper after a COVID-19 patient’s ventilator tube became detached, potentially spraying fluid from the person’s lungs into the air, the Associated Press reported.
“I couldn’t sleep that night,” she told the outlet. “I thought, ‘If I brought this home to my mom, she’s probably going to die, and it’s probably going to be my fault.’ So I had to find a different way.”
Emily Phillips’ husband is an emergency room doctor in Michigan who regularly sees between 100 to 150 patients daily, WZZM reported. He started staying in an RV when Phillips borrowed one from a friend, Holly Haggard.
This led the two women to launch RVs for MDs, a Facebook group aimed at connecting frontline workers with people who own RVs and campers in an effort to make it easier for medical workers to protect their families from coronavirus exposure.
The group has nearly 23,000 members as of Wednesday.
Other health care workers are staying in tighter quarters.
Luke Adams, 35, is a nurse who temporarily moved out of his Pennsylvania home with his wife and young children to head to New York, a coronavirus hotspot, to lend a hand, the Staten Island Advance reported.
He rented a Nissan Rogue and put a small mattress in the back where he sleeps.
A doctor in India had a similar idea.
Dr. Sachin Nayak works at a hospital in Bhopal and started living out of his car to avoid bringing the virus home on the chance he caught it at work, Indian Express reported.
Timmy Cheng, a pulmonary and critical care specialist in Irvine, California, moved into a tent in his family’s garage to help keep from potentially exposing them to the virus, he wrote on Facebook.
He implored others to stay home.
“You can help me and other healthcare workers become un-homeless by STAYING HOME,” he wrote. “JUST DO IT. Nobody is too cool to stay home. Nobody is too healthy to get sick.”
Dr. Rachel Patzer, an epidemiologist in Maryland, and her husband, an emergency room physician treating COVID-19 patients, also made the decision for her husband to move out of the family home and into their garage apartment.
She shared more on Twitter.
“We have a 3 wk old newborn and 2 young kids and just can’t risk it,” she wrote. “It pains me to wonder how many weeks will go by that he won’t get to hold our new baby or see our older kids. This is one example of the sacrifice that healthcare workers are making for our communities.”
Devon Oechsle, 30, is a nurse in Texas and her husband is a firefighter and medic, “Today” reported. The parents of 3-year-old girl Eliana made the heart-wrenching decision to send her to stay with a friend.
Oechsle shared a photo of herself, teary-eyed, along with a Facebook post about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected her family.
“Our jobs are important right now and unlike many, we are still required to work,” she wrote. “And that work carries a high risk of being infected, or spreading this damn virus. I have already been in contact with +covid patients, and the last thing we want to do is have Ellie surrounded by the potential virus we could carry home.”
She added that she feels “punished for having to be the good guy” and not getting to hug her daughter or put her to bed.
“I won’t get to visit her. I won’t get to hug her. I won’t get to tuck her in at night,” she wrote. “We have FaceTime, and that’s it. For up to a month, or who knows how long...and many of my coworkers have had to do the same.”
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 3:07 PM with the headline "Hospital workers send kids away, live in campers to protect family during coronavirus."