North River to NYC

By Doug Barker

The Daily World

Christina Greenway lives in Brooklyn, the one that’s at the end of the North River Road in the lush and remote forest a little south and east of Cosmopolis. But for most of the last month, home was a hotel room in midtown Manhattan. She could see the other Brooklyn across the East River every morning when a bus took her and other nurses like her to work — out of town reinforcements on the frontline of the pandemic.

Greenway, 28, is a surgical nurse at Olympia Orthopaedic. Her office in Olympia is effectively closed because elective surgeries aren’t being done during the pandemic. She heard about the shortages of nurses in New York and, with her employer’s permission, got in touch with a contract nursing agency and they took her and three others from her office Two days after she was accepted, she was in New York, living in a Times Square hotel purchased by the city to house medical personnel. The extra nurses were needed because of the increased number of patients and because many nurses there are either sick or isolating quarantining after illness.

She arrived back home earlier this week. She has to quarantine for 14 days and has to keep her distance from everyone, including her husband, Travis, and her mother, Tara Bridges, who lives nearby and would normally see her daily. After 17 straight 12-hour days, one day off and three more long shifts on her three-week stay, she slept all the day the first day back. As she made her way home Monday morning, neighbors and people who had watched her grow up and graduate from North River High, lined parts of the road to hold up signs and greet her.

Greenway was assigned to a long-term care facility, where every patient was in a high-risk category and most were elderly. “It’s a perfect storm,” she said in a phone interview at the end of a long shift midway through her stay. The first day, two patients in her unit died. Four of her patients were tested that day and all tested positive for COVID-19. It hadn’t been that long since family members had been allowed to come and go freely and “it was spreading like wildfire,” she said.

They did their best to separate patients who tested positive or showed signs, she said, but “it’s hard to isolate them. Each room, almost, has four patients. We have COVID rooms and non-COVID rooms. That’s about the best we’re doing.”

Although in general, things in New York seemed to be improving slightly from when she first arrived, she said, that wasn’t necessarily true where she worked.

“Honestly, it felt like it was getting worse at the long-term care facility. There were more and more positive patients and the staff was still without proper PPE and there was a major lack of cleaning supplies. My last day, five patients tested positive, which put our unit to over half of the patients being positive.”

So many of the New York nurses weren’t working, that contract nurses didn’t always have people to break them in, she said. “Where we are is completely understaffed. We’re lucky to have a (regular) staff member.”

But Greenway said she felt “lucky being at a long-term care facility. It’s not as traumatic. I meet other nurses who have been in ICUs and (one) who has been here 12 days and lost every patient. I’m hoping some of these nurses here will get some happy endings.”

Greenway treated about 30 patients on a shift, overseeing medications and tending to some of the sicker COVID patients. The ones who were so sick that they needed to be intubated to help them breathe went to the hospital, and Greenway said that often they don’t hear back about the patients’ outcomes. Greenway said four patients in her unit died during her stay.

There was a serious lack of personal protective gear and common supplies, she said. In a conversation midway in her stay, she said nurses were asked to make their N95 masks last for a five days when they really should be changed out after eight hours, she said. “It’s hard to find (common supplies such as) alcohol swabs, disinfectant and even gloves,” she said.

Greenway went through the nursing program at Grays Harbor College and got her bachelor’s degree at St Martin’s University in Lacey. Her New York experience and the pandemic was a far cry from the squared-away facility she’s used to, where no one would imagine basic supplies being an issue. “It’s a different world here,” in New York, she said. Another nurse friend gave her some concentrated bleach she found in a New York store. “I take it to work and dilute it and make bleach water. Never in my life have I had to worry about my Lysol wipes being stolen,” she said.

She stayed in the heart of the city but saw little of it. On her one day off, she and a friend walked the 15 blocks to Central Park, but didn’t stay long and came back and slept, she said. When she did get out, it was eerie to see the mostly empty streets, and those who were out were mostly hospital workers, she said. “You see scrubs everywhere.”

Greenway’s 12-hour shifts started at 7 in the morning. Special buses collected nurses at the hotel and dropped them at their facilities and collected them at the end of the day. She isn’t even sure who owns the facility she worked in, or how big it is other than to say there are hundreds of beds. After eating, connecting with family and debriefing with other nurses, there wasn’t much time left before bed and a repeat the next day, she said.

Tara Bridges, Christina’s mom, lives a couple miles from her daughter and son-in-law. She sees her daughter daily when she’s home. While Christina was in New York, Tara woke up before 2 a.m. (5 Eastern time) to call Christina, a self-described heavy sleeper, so she wouldn’t miss her shift. They also talked every night.

“Telling my mom was the hardest part” of deciding to go, Greenway said.

“My initial reaction was like, ‘Absolutely, not! Over my dead body!”’ said Bridges. She worried the whole time, but knows that as a surgical nurse, her daughter knows about sterilization and would be careful. “I’m proud just for her having the courage to go and do this,” she said.

Right now, she can’t even be at home while she quarantines. A cousin fixed up a trailer for her to stay in for two weeks. She can work in her garden and she has her dogs and horses.

She said she felt a little guilty for leaving and could back if it looks like Washington’s ban on elective surgeries becomes extended.

As hard as the closures have been, she thinks it’s best to reopen things slowly, she said, stressing social distancing and wearing masks.

She wonders each day how it’s going at the facility she worked in, but she’s keeping busy in her garden and with her dogs and horses. ”The fact that I live in the country, and can be outside in the garden … I’m lucky to live where I live,” she said.

When Christina Greenway arrived back to North River Monday, neighbors lined the roads to welcome her.

Courtesy photos The four nurses from Olympia Orthopaedic who went to New York are, from left, Pearl Hoyt, Ashley Haskins, Kori Dijos and Christina Greenway