Arlene Meertens has been in nursing for nearly 30 years.
She’s the daughter of a nurse, and she always felt called to care for others, even as a young girl growing up in Guyana, where she remembers fetching water for an elderly blind neighbor.
But as a patient care technician at hard-hit Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center in Brooklyn, she says the COVID-19 pandemic has changed her, and she’s not sure if she can continue on if there’s a resurgence of the virus in the fall.
“I can tell you truthfully, I’ve cried almost every day,” said Meertens. “They’re talking about opening back up the city, and I know we have to go on. But I’m so afraid of it, if we really do have a second wave, what’s going to happen. I’m praying that it’s not so. Because I don’t know if I could hold up.”
Listen to nurse Arlene Meertens tell her own story on WNYC:
Meertens, 52, has experienced the ugliness of the COVID-19 pandemic from all sides. Three of her relatives have passed away from the virus in New York City, as well as two more family members in Guyana. One of her daughters is an FDNY emergency medical technician. And, of course, watching countless patients succumb to the virus has taken its toll.
“I saw so many people on ventilators. I saw so many patients that couldn't move, couldn't help themselves,” she said. “I saw patients actually where their lips are bleeding just because they have to be intubated.”
Arlene Meertens
Meertens said she’s gotten through the worst, darkest of days by leaning on her family — her seven kids, who distract her with lighthearted jokes and little surprises. And she finds support from hospital co-workers.
They start every shift with a group prayer for colleagues who are mourning the loss of loved ones, and for the speedy recovery of their patients, she said — often with a gospel song. Sometimes, she said, she sings those same inspirational hymns to patients through her mask.
“‘Listen, ‘I need you to fight, I need you to live. I’m sure your family members need you,’” she tells her patients. “I think they can hear me, I think they can feel. And I think it may make a difference.”
Health experts have warned of a mental health crisis likely to follow the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the combined grief and loss of so many dead, as well as the lasting impact of the trauma experienced by frontline healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing homes.
Recent reports of the suicides of an EMT in Queens and a Manhattan emergency room doctor have raised red flags, though New York City and state officials haven’t released any specific statistics on mental health indicators.
Arlene Meertens and her fellow medical staff praying before their shift at Kingsbrook Hospital
The city and state both have hotlines to help connect healthcare workers and others to mental health services. And grassroots efforts have sprung up as well, like Reloveution, a non-profit that is connecting first responders and healthcare workers with volunteer mental health professionals across the country.
For Meertens, she said, things are finally returning to something like normal.
“It’s a calm in the air right now. It’s like what we have not experienced in a long time,” she said. “We had a few codes today in the facility. But no one I took care of today passed away and that makes me feel really good.”
Still, she said, every death weighs on her soul. It got to the point where she could tell if someone was going to pass away. The person’s skin lost its normal sheen, she said, taking on a dullish grey.
But the dead are not all the city has lost. Healthcare workers like Meertens, with decades of experience and training, are questioning whether they can carry on.
“Each and every time one of these patients dies it hurts me more,” she said. “Do I want to remain in nursing? I don’t know if I can do it.”
