In Beginners, a favorite movie of mine, Ewan McGregor does some internal monologuing to a montage of old photographs of his parents. This is what the sky looked like in 1955, he intones. This is what kissing looked like. This was fashion. Sometimes I do this for my life now. This is what grocery shopping looks like in April 2020. This is driving on the freeway. This is a meeting.
Yesterday I went to Safeway. The line outside was nice and short. The staff sanitizing the carts and letting shoppers in one by one were jovial, joking around from behind their homemade masks. Inside the store, I followed my list carefully, trying not to take too long. But some shelves were empty and I had to improvise. No jelly today, should I get maple syrup? No chicken thighs. Drumsticks? There was salad where last week there was none. I know that the sobering truth behind these empty shelves is that Covid hit a Safeway packing plant in Tracy very hard. I try to send those workers good healing energy as I shop. Mostly I’m just busy being thankful that there’s any food at all. India. Africa.
At the checkout, when I finally get to the top of the line, I thank the checker for doing his job. I never did that before Covid. I’ve thanked firemen, street sweepers, office cleaners, and trash collectors for their service, but never grocery store clerks. I’m going to add them to my list going forward. I reckon you can’t thank too many people in this world for the jobs they do.
He tells me he moved back here last year from Australia to help out his parents, who are elderly. We agree on the good timing. I tell him I’m a nurse, and he thanks me, so I let him know I’m a hospice nurse, not an ICU nurse, in case he thinks I’m working 12 hour shifts with folks on ventilators and inadequate PPE. He asks if I have any patients with the virus. I tell him soon.
Next week, I will get my first Covid positive patients. So I will move from wearing PPE only for visits to facilities where Covid lives, to wearing it when I visit my own patients.
Now that we have folks with the virus on hospice service, we have a new thing at work to improve our safety. It’s called a Doffing Coach. Specially trained nurses stand outside the Covid positive patients’ homes and make sure the nurse doing the visit puts on and takes off their PPE safely. As silly as my new title is, I quite like the idea of being a Doffing Coach. We have been instructed to be assertive. I thought I would step out of some grand vehicle wearing a swirling black cape and top hat. Gloves first! I would thunder at my coworker nurse in their PPE. Drop the faceshield in the bag by its elastic. Drop it!
I did my first Doffing Coach visit. Strangely, there was no cape. I waited obediently outside and eventually my teammate came out from her visit in her stylish yellow paper gown, gloves, N95 respirator and plastic face shield. She had prepared her area beforehand for taking her PPE off. There was a table spread out with hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, and a plastic bag for her contaminated gear. She moved very slowly, thinking each move out before she made it.
I watched intently as she took her PPE off. My teammate has been working in healthcare since she was a teen and a nurse for half a century. She started in the operating theater, so sterile procedure is in her DNA. We’ve been given a few different ways we can doff the gear. Whatever she’s doing: that’s what I’m going to do.
After the visit, we stood six feet apart in the parking lot and had a fantastic gossip session. It’s the little things you miss. Not much gossip goes down during Zoom meetings except in the chat window.
The next day I had to go into my office for my annual N95 respirator fit test. Every year this is a chore we have to perform. You gather with a group of coworkers in a conference room at the office and an outside company fits us with N95 masks. This involves a bunch of weird stuff that you would not want to catch sight of through a window. We stand in a circle with our N95s on and giant white plastic hoods over our heads. The outside company person goes around the circle and sprays a bitter tasting spray through a small hole in our hoods. We are instructed to do some relatively simple and yet strange things: move our heads from side to side, bend over and stand up straight numerous times, count to thirty. Bottom line: if you taste the spray, your mask is not sealed properly and you fail the test. Takes about an hour. Lots of paperwork.
Of course, this whole weird and tedious deal is to help save our lives. Everyone knows that. We just usually grumble about having to do it every year. But this year? PARTEEEEEEE!!!! Twenty of us got to be together, six feet apart, in our large conference room. The chatter was intense. None of us had seen each other for six weeks. Then we got to stand shoulder to shoulder in the circle because of course we had our N95 masks on. Just that shoulder to shoulder contact with a bunch of non family members was exotic.
The following day I had to don PPE to do a covid test. As well trained as I am, it was my first nasopharyngeal swab for the Novel Coronavirus 19 and that gown and mask felt awfully hot. My patient joked around with me as he always does. We told each other how great it was to see each other in person after more than a month, even though I was dressed like an astronaut. I asked him if he was scared he has the virus. He shook his head. My Doffing Coach was waiting outside the house for me in her Toyota. She was not wearing a cape. Spoiler alert for the next season of Downton Abbey: the test came back negative.
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