Storyteller: Emilee Green
At fifty-four years old, Kelly of Bay City has spent her whole life working in healthcare and has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Currently working as a registered nurse and Case Manager at Covenant Hospital, she recalls first hearing about COVID-19 on the news station at her parents’ house.
During the first few months Kelly was on the front-end and saw a lot of the suffering that people experienced from COVID-19. “It was awful like I’d never seen in all of my years of nursing.” she tells me. Eventually, due to being a high risk individual, Kelly chose her well-being over her job and quit working in person most of the time. Now, she is able to work mostly remotely for Covenant, but it’s nowhere near the same Nursing career that she’s always loved. She hopes to return once she’s received the vaccine.
As a high-risk individual, she suffers from high anxiety of contracting COVID from her job or giving it to her loved ones. Because of this, she has isolated herself from many of her loved ones including her parents and children. “I don’t see my parents or my kids like I would like to. I can’t. I can’t be responsible for passing the virus onto them.”
Kelly tells me about a new sensory detail she experiences – which she describes as “constant anxiety and worry for her family since March”. Kelly describes the awful reality of what some of her nursing friends who are still on the front-ends are seeing. She tells me that the only thing people should be doing right now is staying home and staying safe.
Kelly shares with me that this pandemic has taught her the future is unprecedented and to hold your loved ones closely.
MIPandemicStory 