Unsung Heroes: COVID-19 patient ‘can do nothing but cry’ over Atrium team’s kindness
Betty Nicole Taylor said she “can do nothing but cry” over the kindness and generosity of Atrium healthcare workers since she tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Thinking about their visits, the food they paid for, their smiles and gentle words keeps her going, the Rock Hill woman said. And she wants to thank them.
Taylor, a part-time clinical assistant at Atrium’s Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, is relatively new to the area and has no friends yet. She has four days of self-quarantine left in her home. She feels fine and shows only minor symptoms of the virus, including an ear infection and stuffed nose.
She and her daughters, who are 5 and 17 and show no signs of the virus, are self-quarantining in separate rooms, along with her father.
Her mother, however, remained on a ventilator at Piedmont Medical Center Thursday, also due to COVID-19. Taylor said her mother, 62-year-old Betty Davis, also spent 10 days on dialysis after the virus shut down her kidneys.
A nurse let Taylor see her mother via Face Time on Wednesday.
“It’s so sad, seeing all the cords, being hooked up to all the machines,” Taylor, 39, told The Charlotte Observer. “I couldn’t hold her hand or give her a kiss.”
And to think her mother was only going to spend the weekend helping her move before returning to New Jersey, she said.
Taylor said her 64-year-old father, Alexander Taylor, also tested positive for COVID-19 but is doing well.
“Yesterday I had such a bad day,” Taylor told the Observer, referring to seeing her mom via Face Time.
But when troubling thoughts intrude, she said, she replaces them with more joyful ones of the Atrium team that has been by her own side.
‘The most remarkable thing’
After going to school in Georgia, she landed a job here in December as a mobile phlebotomist with American Health Associates. She now works full-time as a Piedmont Medical Center phlebotomist and, since Feb. 17, as a part-time clinical assistant at Carolinas Medical Center.
Since testing positive April 7 for COVID-19, she said, an Atrium employee health team has given her boxed food, tissues, toilet paper, packs of Halls cough drops and bottles of Gatorade and water.
“And nobody asked for a dime back,” she said.
Atrium nurse Monica Wampler contacted Dr. Susan Pittman of Atrium Health Harrisburg Family Physicians one night this week “when I wasn’t feeling my best” because of her ear infection and stuffed nose, she said.
Pittman wrote prescriptions for an antibiotic and a nasal spray, picked them up and drove them to her home at 9 p.m., she said.
“It’s our job to take care of each other,” Taylor said Wampler told her.
“I’m so glad we could help,” Pittman said, according to Taylor.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life,” Taylor told the Observer, referring to the Atrium team’s outpouring of support.
In an email to the Observer this week, she said: “I am new to the area and have no friends or family here. This was the most remarkable thing I ever experienced as an employee and a patient.”
Tell us about unsung heroes
Do you know an individual who is quietly making a difference in people’s lives during the coronavirus crisis?
The type of unsung hero who takes an extra shift at the supermarket so a colleague can tend to a sick relative, holds a concert online to cheer people up or picks up someone’s tab at a take-out restaurant? Or maybe a business owner who is financially hurting but still helping others?
We’d love to hear from you. Email reporter Joe Marusak at jmarusak@charlotteobserver.com.
This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 6:30 AM.