Don’t want to bring COVID home - Registered nurse worried she will infect her family

Healthcare workers worldwide have been saying 'we go to work for you, please stay home for us'.

That's the reality of 37-year-old Shana Griffiths, a registered nurse at a county hospital in Miami, Florida. She said that working on the COVID front line has taken a toll on her family.

"My whole life has changed, especially with my kids. Now my kids can't just run up and hug me anymore, they can't just be all over me when I get home; there is a process now," she said. "When I get home, I have to strip from the garage."

Griffiths expressed that she is scared of bringing the virus home.

"There is always a concern in the back of my mind wondering if today will be the day when I start getting symptoms, or will this be the patient to give the virus to me, because I'm always gonna be exposed to COVID patients whether I know it or not," she said.

She said that it has not been easy to maintain a balance between work and parenting.

"I let my kids know that there is a pandemic going on so things have to change with me. I explain to them what I go through at work. I take care of COVID patients, so there is a possibility I could have it and they could get it, so everything I'm doing is in their best interest," Griffiths told THE STAR. "At the end of the day, I still have to work so I can provide for them and pay my bills, otherwise we can't survive,"

Her fears heightened two weeks ago, after her mother tested positive for the coronavirus.

Turned my life upside down

"She lives in Connecticut and remember we can't travel, so I couldn't go to see her. My mom and I are like best friends so when I was told (about the positive test), that turned my life upside down," she said. "I wasn't even thinking like a nurse anymore. I'm like everybody else now because my mom is sick and all I can think about is losing somebody in my family."

Being an essential worker during the pandemic has shifted Griffiths' perspective on life, as she no longer stresses the 'little things'.

Griffiths, who left Jamaica when she was two, has been a nurse for 16 years. She said that she has dealt with other communicable diseases, but COVID is the most severe. She is urging persons to take it seriously.

"What is happening here every day I wouldn't want it to be happening in Jamaica. There are people who we are putting on life-saving machines so they can breathe to see another day, to see their family. People are dying with no one by their sides because their family can't come into the hospital to be with them. Some are being placed in body bags without their family ever seeing them again because they can't have an open funeral or nothing like that. Stop hurting yourself and practise social distancing, COVID is real; I see it every day," Griffiths told THE STAR.