By Barb Coyle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Had 13 people die, whom I had contacted by phone. Maybe more than that, whom I had not known at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was one of two nurses who started with the Health Department to assist “for a few weeks”, until this outbreak was over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Man. Wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early in that process, one of the nurses put together that folks were losing a sense of taste. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We told the Wisconsin Health Department. Were we the first to figure that out? Who knows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was a hard time for the country; a hard time for Bay View.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then worked at other vaccine areas like South Division High School, and the Southside Health Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I bet there are few folks who were not affected somehow. Job loss. Work location change. Family loss. Health disruption. The list seems endless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And so I remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I was just a small part of hitting this ongoing disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Be safe out there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It ended up that I worked for 6+ days a week for two years….I had 13 people die<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1853,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-june-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1851"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1851\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}