‘I keep telling them how strong they are.’ Therapist from NC fighting pandemic in New York.

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As a physical therapist, Lauren Haegele started her 12-hour day on the northwestern tip of Manhattan, checking in on a 65-year-old patient who promptly collapsed on the floor.

Of the 10 clients she assisted Wednesday, seven of them were fighting the coronavirus. As she helped the first of them back to his feet, he told her he felt embarrassed at having his legs buckle beneath them.

On her second stop, Haegele visited a 40-year-old COVID-19-positive woman who was breathing with the help of oxygen tanks. She sobbed throughout the entire visit.

“She was crying that she was scared she would never get off the oxygen,” said Haegele, 33, who lives in New York’s financial district. “It feels kind of helpless to talk through. ... I keep telling them how strong they are.”

Haegele, a Raleigh native who attended Wake Christian Academy, started a new phase of her medical career in February, days before the city’s first confirmed case. In the weeks since, the city has seen more than 30,000 hospitalized, and the death toll has topped 7,000, making Haegele’s home and workplace the epicenter of a global pandemic.

She brings a unique level of empathy to the job. She had the virus herself.

It started at the end of March with a sore throat — not a telltale symptom — which she initially dismissed as an allergy. But she got checked out, tested and started 10 days of home isolation. By the time she got positive test results — eight days later — she already felt better. Her temperature never passed 98.6 degrees.

“Headache and fatigue were the worst,” she said, but then came the anxiety of returning to work after getting medically cleared. “I had a lot of trepidation. The morning I had gotten dressed and gone to work, I just started crying. What if I’m still contagious?”

She takes all precautions: temperature screening, gloves, masks, a face shield she cleans between visits and carries in a paper sack on the street. On top of the home visits, Haegele fills in at an assisted living center that has suffered staff shortages, and for that job, she changes into fresh scrubs after getting off the subway. For the home visits, there is no place to change clothes.

Most of her patients are geriatric, having just gotten out of the hospital. And for them, Haegele said, there’s a balance between the small risk of having a nurse visit and the greater risk of needing hospital care again. Still, one of her patients wanted to wait a week.

“They’re already so scared,” she said. “They’re petrified to even let you come in. They’re very vulnerable to fall again.”

On Friday, Haegele had two COVID-positive patients on her schedule: one of them 93 and the other 95. It’s important just to get them moving and regain pulmonary strength, she said.

Her day was well underway at 7 a.m., but the subway was so delayed she had to call a car service. Her pay has been cut 20 percent, but she has so much extra work it hasn’t mattered.

So she keeps going, along with the rest of the stricken city, one patient at a time.

This story was originally published April 17, 2020 at 10:40 AM with the headline "‘I keep telling them how strong they are.’ Therapist from NC fighting pandemic in New York.."

Josh Shaffer

The News & Observer

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Josh Shaffer is a general assignment reporter on the watch for “talkers,” which are stories you might discuss around a water cooler. He has worked for The News & Observer since 2004 and writes a column about unusual people and places.