SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — Ana Wilkinson said she felt scared as she packed for New York, but her latest pictures show an emergency room nurse whose commitment may be stronger than the coronavirus.
“I got this,” she said on a Zoom call with News 8.
In New York State, more people have died from COVID-19 in a single week than on 9/11. The need was so great that Wilkinson singed up through an online post seeking nurses and doctors to travel to the Big Apple to help.
“The hospitals were stressed to begin with,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The staffing shortage was clear from the start, and so she traveled from San Diego to New York City.
“The nurses are taking a bigger load of eight to one, or 12 patients to one nurse,” said Wilkinson.
Wilkinson became part of a growing wave of nurses bused into area hospitals working 12-hour overnight shifts for seven days straight. She is getting paid, but the financial incentive is not what motivates her.
“My motto is: Nobody dies alone. I will sit with them, and hold their hand,” she said.
Some patients are so contagious their families are not able to come say their last goodbyes.
"The hardest thing is they don't see their family. We are their family. I’ll try to give them my phone and call their family, or something,” she said.
Even with an intense workload, both the physical and emotional, Wilkinson has a way of cheering up her patients.
“I do a little - I just kind of bring it in - and do a little dance because they'll smile for that,” she said.
At the end of a hard day, she takes those smiles to her hotel that the staffing agency is paying for, but she thinks of home - where her husband and two boys are missing her terribly.
“I talk to them every day,” she said.
Hidden notes they stuffed in mom's suitcase remind her just how much she's appreciated.