Tina Lidell
Editor’s note: This is part of Coping with COVID-19, brief looks at people during a pandemic.
By Nyjah Bunn
Tina Liddell works at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit as a registered nurse while studying to be a nurse practitioner.
She normally lives with her 17-year-old daughter, but due to the coronavirus scare she sent her to live with her cousins.
Liddell, 53, got sick for about three weeks around the beginning of March.
“I was so sick and weak,” she said. “I never got tested but, I’m sure I had it.”
She is now better and has returned to work but isn’t ready for her daughter to come back home. At work, a lot of people got sick, doctors and nurses, she said. Some of the older people just retired, so they didn’t have to deal with it.
“People even died,” Lidell said. “One of the nurses that I work with was on the ventilator for three weeks and died.
“My days at work now are chaotic because people don’t know what they are doing or what to do.”
Everyone wants to be in charge, she said. There aren’t clear orders.
She is now in charge of teleconferencing for the VA hospital clinic. The hospital isn’t taking any in-person patient visits until July 1.
“At first people are intimidated by the process of phone conferencing,” she said. “I’ve spent over an hour helping one patient.”
But patients are okay with being seen over the phone because they are fearful of contracting the virus.
She protects herself at work by wearing a surgical mask. She is no longer eligible for an N95 mask, she said. Before the coronavirus, the N95 mask was seen as a one-time use.Now they are reporting you can use it up to a year.
“I’m so tired of COVID-19, I just try to turn it off.”
See the series: Coping with COVID-19