Health Care Workers Try To Bring COVID-19 Patients Joy, Less Isolation As Life Ends

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Chief Medical Officer Doyle Coleman begins to layer on protective gear to treat a COVID-19 patient while talking with pharmacist Sami Swisher. That gear includes gloves, shoe-coverings, gown, mask, head covering and face shield. All of it must be put on before entering the room, and taken off immediately after leaving.

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Livingston HealthCare is one of more than 1,300 critical access hospitals in the U.S. Built in 2015, it serves an area twice the size of Rhode Island, home to about 17,000 people.

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Assistant Director of Nursing Jenn Schmid is in one of Livingston HealthCare’s two ICU rooms. Before COVID-19, Schmidt’s job was mostly administrative — but she stepped in to fill the hospital’s need during the area’s coronavirus surges. One duty she took up was spending time with families as they said farewell to loved ones through the ICU’s glass windows.

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Respiratory therapist Mary Graham sets up a ventilator at the height of the coronavirus at the facility. Three critical patients were on those machines — while the hospital had only two dedicated ICU rooms. Ordinarily, the hospital would be able to transfer its worst cases to larger facilities in the area, but COVID-19 had pushed those over capacity too.

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A canvas photo of Lori Schmidt and her late husband Jerry on vacation. The photo was a gift after Jerry passed away of COVID-19 in Livingston HealthCare on Nov. 15.

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While Lori Schmidt’s husband Jerry was in the hospital, she was unable to visit him. «If I had known that I would never get to hold his hand or anything again, oh my gosh, I would’ve done things so differently, Schmidt says. «But I guess naively I really didn’t think Jerry was gonna die from this.

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The Emergency Department at Livingston Healthcare. The Absaroka Mountains just outside the facility run south toward Yellowstone National Park.

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Travel Nurse Michael Niynaku, tasked with treating COVID-19 patients for the day, at a nurses’ station in front of baggies containing staff members’ N95 masks.

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Travel Nurse Michael Niynaku, tasked with treating COVID-19 patients for the day, at a nurses’ station in front of baggies containing staff members’ N95 masks.

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«You also, you know, feel bad for your patients because these Martians are coming in, looking so different, Blaine says. «You know, you literally look like an alien and you’re trying to care for your patients, and they just feel like lepers.

Blaine does what she can to make the hospital feel less sterile for her patients. She keeps a squishy, pink-haired unicorn dangling from a keychain on her ID badge. When you squeeze it, she demonstrates, a little brown bubble forms on its backside.

«It poops, she whispers, laughing. I like to joke around and I like to have fun and I feel like we all only get one trip on this Earth and it might as well be part of a good old laugh. You know nurses always ask about poop.

Blaine says that for nurses, adaptability is part of the job description. With only eyes peering out behind a mask, that pooping unicorn is one way of bringing joy into a world of isolation.

Limits on visitations in hospitals across the country are unlikely to change much until this spring or summer, when vaccines are widely available. Until then, health care workers will continue to adapt, to innovate, and to find reasons to smile.