By Barb Coyle

March 15, 2025 marked the 5th anniversary of starting as a COVID nurse for the City of Milwaukee.  The City had been dealing with this outbreak for one week, although they knew it was coming. It ended up that I worked for 6+ days a week for two years. And even so, I did not work as long as other members of my family had.

Had 13 people die, whom I had contacted by phone. Maybe more than that, whom I had not known at the time.

I was one of two nurses who started with the Health Department to assist “for a few weeks”, until this outbreak was over.

Man. Wrong. 

We ended up with over a hundred nurses, in teams of 6 or 8, working feverishly to gather information and somehow stop this mess. And lots of other folks like inspectors, epidemiologists, doctors and researchers working as well. 

We started by calling, and putting each case in its own pocket folder – for maybe 100 cases.  We used a six page questionnaire trying to figure out what was happening. Later we only asked for 3 pages of info.

Early in that process, one of the nurses put together that folks were losing a sense of taste. 

We told the Wisconsin Health Department. Were we the first to figure that out? Who knows.

It was a hard time for the country; a hard time for Bay View.

We eventually stopped our phone calls, and moved to vaccines at the Wisconsin Center. I worked to draw up the vaccines which were given by other nurses.

And then worked at other vaccine areas like South Division High School, and the Southside Health Center.

I bet there are few folks who were not affected somehow. Job loss. Work location change. Family loss. Health disruption. The list seems endless. 

And what do I do now? Vaccines every 6 months, because I can. Less travel to large groups. More time at home, with more projects. 

And so I remember. 

And I was just a small part of hitting this ongoing disease.

Be safe out there!