For most people in Baton Rouge, the coronavirus has felt like an invisible disease.
For essential workers, it has been forever life altering. Especially for health care workers who are seeing this virus at its absolute worst.
For our June issue, 225 interviewed staff at Baton Rouge General, Our Lady of the Lake, Ochsner Medical Center – Baton Rouge, and Woman’s Hospital about what they’ve seen as coronavirus cases reached their units.
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They describe the sickest patients they’ve ever cared for. Patients who are terrified, who don’t always understand what’s happening to them. Patients ages 20 to 80. Some with underlying conditions. Some without. Patients who take weeks to get better—if they get better.
Rules restricting hospital visitors are constantly changing, but workers describe halls that felt like ghost towns in the beginning of the outbreak. Waiting rooms were empty. Visits happened only through iPad screens. Even as patient load rapidly increased, the hospitals got quieter.
Every conversation has been happening through heavy layers of PPE. Coworkers have learned to communicate with their eyes, or even through shared feelings.
Some hospital employees have been sleeping in hotels or isolated parts of their homes in hopes of safeguarding their families. They shower constantly. When those with young children finally see their kids, they describe a painful inner battle: “Is today a day I can do without a hug?”
But for a time of such high stress, hospital workers also describe an experience that’s been deeply rewarding. They’re grateful to the community for the outpouring of support, the flyovers and all the donated restaurant meals. They all say they’re being provided with plenty of PPE, and that they are proud to fight this disease alongside their coworkers. The hospitals, they say, were ready for this.
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Read their first-person accounts of the pandemic in our cover story.
And be sure to check out our full June edition, on print newsstands now and also available digitally below. We recount the ways social distancing has impacted churches and boutiques, how COVID-19 is disproportionally impacting the black community, public art to check out around town and so much more.