Notes from the Frontline: One healthcare worker recalls his experiences in New York amid the coronavirus pandemic
I’m never quite sure if people take the time to read my newsletters. I sit down at my desk, bang away at the keys, press send, and pour myself a drink. It’s an exercise in a certain kind of humility. “Why,” I ask myself, “does what I have to say matter?” And yet, time after time, I find myself thinking, “Enough is enough. Something has to be said.”
The last Loads of Love Newsletter that went out — To Wear A Mask, Or Not To Wear — received a lot of feedback, most of it positive, from readers who shared my feelings when it came to the subject of wearing masks in public. In case you missed it, one paragraph from my missive summed it all up::
It’s a great privilege to be able to walk out your door and say to the world “you can’t tell me what to do, I am not afraid of this, and, I don’t (think) I have it.” When I see people walking in our city without a face covering, it tells me that they don’t know anyone who has suffered through COVID-19 and, therefore, don’t give a fuck about the most vulnerable among us.
One of the responses I received following my newsletter was from Jason Forbis, a San Francisco resident originally from a small town in Missouri. Jason has been in the healthcare industry for the past 14 years working as a nurse.
Jason confessed that he did not take the virus seriously at the outset of the pandemic — a refrain I have heard from other health care workers that I know.
Surprisingly, In mid-January, aware of the havoc the virus was causing in Asia, Jason nonetheless traveled to Hong Kong, before heading on to Israel and finally returning to San Francisco — where he became very ill. Jason noted that it took him almost two and a half weeks to recover. During that time, he never considered that he had anything but the flu. Fast-forward to mid-April: California’s statewide shelter-in-place order was in effect. San Francisco was beginning to show promising signs of “flattening the curve.” Emergency rooms were close to empty, with very little new COVID-19 patients coming in.
In New York, however, it was a different story. The city’s number of COVID-19-positive cases kept jumping higher and higher. Added to the pandemic crisis was the lack of resources available to deal with the case-load; New York institutions were understaffed and overloaded.
Jason, driven by his desire to help, made the decision to fly to New York in April to help. Upon arriving, Jason was assigned to work at Kings County Hospital, a massive facility with 627-beds, located in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn which served primarily minority residents of lower-economic status.
On his first day, upon entering the critical care trauma unit, the very first person Jason came in contact with greeted him with the words “Thank You”. It would become a phrase, a mantra even, that he would hear repeated time and again from the patients, staff, and families the entire time he was there.
I asked Jason about the availability of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) during his time working at the hospital. In the beginning, he noted that the medical staff always had a new mask and gown to wear. This is standard protocol, Jason pointed out to me: after each consultation with an infectious patient, staff had to dispose of all gowns, masks, and gloves. However, as time went on, the needed supplies began to dwindle. What had once been readily disposed of was now worn multiple times. Staff was given one set of PPE intended to last a complete 12–16-hour shift. Some staff took to bringing in their own masks and gowns for protection. As Jason tells it, while staff generally got a new gown every day, they would have to wear the same face mask for five or six days in a row — or until it was visibly soiled.
During his time at Kings County Hospital, Jason would find himself among a new family of LGBTQ+ health care workers, connecting with nurses from all over the country who were there, “in it together,” exposed to the dramatic events unfolding before them. They were to become other’s primary support. They kept each other’s spirits up after long days — leaving the hospital after their shifts, walking — sometimes for hours, — so they could talk about their day, lives, and dreams. Under the tremendous stress, the weight of what was happening around them, they still had each other. For Jason, it was an experience akin to the bond he had shared with other servicemen and women during his time in the military.
And, as in any war a soldier may face, death was constant during Jason’s time working at the hospital. The death of those who came in with the virus and the passing of the healthcare workers who tended to them, sacrificing their lives in the care of others. Jason recalled that the death of a coworker was like “someone punched them all in the face”. There were many days when the number of patients who needed ventilators outpaced the number available. During those days, they waited for someone to die so that they could get the equipment they needed.
It was during the last weeks of his time in Brooklyn that Jason began to notice the number of patients who came in with COVID-19 beginning to taper-off. But, that didn’t come without a price. During the six weeks that Jason was stationed in Brooklyn, he witnessed the death of 2,100 lives. The health care workers he stood side-by-side with did so much with so little.
Since his return to work in San Francisco, Jason continues to regularly get tested in order to be safe enough to care for patients. While his tests have always returned negative for the active virus, his blood antibody test is positive — proof that he had been exposed to the virus, likely the flu he experienced in January. He also believes that, by January, the presence of coronavirus in the San Francisco community was very much actively spreading.
Jason wanted to me to know — and share with you — that, while it’s not surprising how many of us want to be back to “normal,” in the presence of those we love and care about, it may come to a shock to grasp the toll this pandemic has taken on all of us, positive and negative, alike. He, like other healthcare providers, knows that any rush towards normalcy, prior to our period of self-isolation, may have disastrous effects.
He also reiterated, like I so elegantly did in my last newsletter, the importance of wearing a mask, noting that its protection isn’t just for yourself — but for those around you. Many of the patients Jason saw at Kings County weren’t there because they didn’t take care of themselves — they were there because someone else exposed them to the virus.
As some shelter in place restrictions begin to relax, the timeline for reopening is cautious in many places. Our community has an entire industry of workers in nightlife, restaurants, and frontline services that have suffered greatly and will have a hard time bouncing back. It will take a lot of healing and support to keep us all together.
Our conversation was an emotional one for both of us. Jason still has his moments, sometimes better, sometimes worse. He is such an angel, his sacrifice and work went above and beyond anything I could ever imagine. And, he hopes no one ever has to suffer through what New York went through. Being on the front lines of this pandemic takes a very special kind of person. Willing to extend your hand to a stranger in their time of need. To listen, be patient, and to care.
Please join me in thanking Jason and all those frontline workers who have sacrificed so much.
