A nurse’s heartbreaking Facebook post has gone viral over the weekend after she revealed the devastating toll leaving her daughter amid the COVID-19 pandemic has had. Devon Oechsle told NBC she and her co-workers are facing situations at work and home that they never imagined.
“Nobody signed up for this,” she said. “No nursing program or medical school prepares us for a pandemic.”
This week, Oechsle and her husband, Jason — a firefighter and medic for the City of Bryan, Texas — had to have “a very hard conversation”. Together, they decided to send their three-year-old daughter, Eliana, to a friends house nearby to stay for the foreseeable future, as both of them are potentially exposed to the virus daily.
The couple does not know when their daughter will be able to return home safely.
“This is the face of someone who feels punished for trying to be the ‘good guy,’” Oechsle wrote in a lengthy post. “My job as an ER nurse is just that: my job. I don’t ever feel like it’s anything crazy or special or deserving of accolades. Jason feels the same way as a firefighter/medic.
“But, our jobs are important right now, and unlike many, we are still required to work. And that work carries a high risk of being infected, or spreading this damn virus,” she continued. “We are like poison to her right now. We have been exposed, and we don’t want her to get it.”
She adds that her family’s situation is not unique, emphasising the sacrifice that all health care and emergency professionals make each day.
“We have tons of co-workers and colleagues who have had to do the same thing,” Oechsle said. “Tons. Hundreds.”
The only way we can help protect them: staying home.
“If…you are having to stay home with your kids all day, consider it a blessing and absolutely NOTHING less,” Oechsle wrote. “And for heaven’s sake, everyone, STAY. AT. HOME. The sooner this crap is over, the quicker my kid can come home.”
