'Dad, are you going to die?': Bay Area COVID health care workers face fear at home
San Jose Mercury NewsJan 17, 2021
Jan. 17—In the overflowing intensive care unit at
When he goes home each night, his wife and three young children are waiting with monster fears of their own.
"Hey Dad, are you going to die?" his 9-year-old son, Shaan, asks.
"No, I'm not going to die," Gohil reassures him.
"Because COVID's not going to get you, right?"
"No, it's not," he says.
"But it could," the child says.
"No. It won't."
How much truth can you tell your children? he wonders. It's one more worry.
For medical professionals, from nursing assistants at elder-care homes to pulmonologists like Gohil at county hospitals, home during the pandemic isn't always a place of refuge.
These overworked and often overwhelmed health care workers have become the superheroes who fight the evil virus for the good of humankind. Their powers lie in their expertise, their empathy and their endurance. But COVID warriors like
"It's very difficult when we go home," he said. "Everyone is suffering in different ways."
At the height of the global pandemic now in its 11th month, many intensive care units across the
Behind every casualty is someone desperately trying to save them — and too often lately, losing the fight. It's a burden many care professionals carry home, adding to the challenges they find there.
A kidney specialist at
Health care workers try to find solace in the fact that they are part of history, that trying to save people from this global pandemic is, in a way, the honor of their lifetimes.
But Dr.
"They're dying. I've never seen so many deaths," she said Thursday. "It's like one or two a day. We had a lot of deaths just this week."
The heartbreak has been relentless at work, but it's been brutal at home, too. She and her husband, cardiologist
"Even when I'm home, you never spend much time with me. That's why I want to go," he told his parents this week, Yarlagadda said. "I'm not complaining, but I'm just telling you."
Yarlagadda was crushed.
"I don't blame him," she said. "He told the truth. But it breaks my heart."
The fear becomes real
Working as a nursing assistant at Burlingame Skilled Nursing in the midst of an outbreak that has claimed more than a dozen residents, she has heard the cries of the sick.
"They're calling your name," Barnum, 50, said. "Please help me, I can't breathe."
At home with her two grown daughters and three grandsons, she's made it clear that "the virus is really scary." That's why the boys, ages 6, 7, and 8, know to wash their hands all the time — she hears them counting to 20 at the kitchen sink — and not open the door for strangers.
"They ask me, 'Why are you going to work when there's a lot of virus outside?'" she said. "I told them if I'm not going back to work, we don't have food, we cannot eat. We cannot pay the rent. I cannot pay for my car."
Barnum was so worried about contracting and spreading the virus that when she pulled into her driveway at home each night, she changed into fresh clothes in the car and left her shoes at the door before she walked inside. Still, the boys would squeal and run for cover, she said.
Then it happened: She tested positive in late December. "It was a nightmare."
Her 25-year-old daughter, Lyka, fell ill and so did 8-year-old Karlo — as well as her 28-year-old daughter, Shara, who is 5 months pregnant and her son-in-law,
"I always pray to God, heal my family," she said. She asked that she be the one to take the brunt of the illness. "I can handle the headache. I can handle the body ache. I can handle the shortness of breath. But not my family."
Over the past two weeks, they have all recovered and Barnum has returned to work. But sometimes in the middle of the night, she hears her daughter or grandson coughing. She tiptoes in and listens for the pattern of their breaths.
In the ICU at Valley Med, keeping patients breathing is the job of respiratory therapist
COVID attacks the lungs and when patients end up here, McAuley handles the intubations and regulates the oxygen levels. It's delicate and exacting work.
"Everyone deserves a chance to go home to their family," she says. "I'm doing the best I can to make that happen."
That's what she always tells her 8-year-old daughter, Harper.
But in the adult world, McAuley, 33, knows that sometimes that's not enough. She doesn't tell her daughter about the moments of silence she shares with doctors and nurses at the end, when they hold the patient's hand and wish them peace. To McAuley, "it's a beautiful side of the darkness."
While she is working 12-hour shifts, she leans on her husband, Mark, who cares for the children at home and helps with their online schooling. They've been married 14 years and he can tell in an instant when she's lost a patient. When she walks in the door, he quickly directs the children to sit quietly on the couch.
Without him, "I don't think I'd be able to get through all of it," she said. "I probably don't give him enough compliments."
McAuley has already assured her daughter that she doesn't need to worry about mommy getting sick.
"Does that person have a family? Does that person have kids?" Harper asks.
Everybody does, McAuley tells her.
Relief at home
For the caregivers in the trenches, the promise of a vaccine helps them see victory in the end. But the rollout has been slow and they know the battle will go on for months, at least.
So the families at home, in an endurance race of their own, continue to try making life easier for those on the frontlines. Critical care nurse
It's intense and exhausting. Her mother, Luz, and her fiance,
Not everyone has that luxury. For those who live alone, the COVID lockdown is another oppressive force.
"The isolation for me gets a little exponential at times," said registered nurse
Her brother, Chris, is a physician in
"She always says — of course, this is in the Bible — 'This too shall pass,'" Thurstone said. "When we're in the quicksand of it, it doesn't seem like it's going to, but I try to keep my eye and my heart on that. Eventually, it will pass."
The emotions that health care workers are reluctant to express at home are often shared at work.
And while the 44-year-old pulmonologist sees his colleagues giving pep talks around the nurses station, he also sees them in tears in the corridors.
There used to be an "unwritten contract," he said, that you work really hard at the hospital and when you get home you can, for the most part, escape it.
"But now you go home and the family is under stress as well," he said. "They are wondering what the monster looks like. There's fear."
Somehow, though, after confronting this monster face to face every day, he finds a realm of sanctuary with his family.
With his 4-year-old daughter, Zoya, he watches the animated adventures of "Peppa Pig" and her farmyard friends that "take you miles away from COVID."
With his wife, Neha, whom he met while studying in
And with his two boys, including 10-year-old Akaal, he tunes into the catalog of Marvel movies, where they are mesmerized by superheroes vanquishing their foes. They're currently in the world of Iron Man, who protects the world in his iron suit.
At home on his couch with his boys at his side, Gohil's daily armor — his gloves and gown, his face mask and shield — are left behind. So is the monster.
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