December 2020: Lucia transporting a patient up to Edmonton ICU.
We have many frontline health workers in our church family. We wanted to see how they're doing and hopefully in hearing their stories we can gain better understanding and empathy with what they have to face each day. Meet Lucia! 😊
1. Hi there! Could you introduce yourself and let us know what you do for work?
I am Lucia Chan. I came to Canada in 1993 and joined SCCEFC. I love snowboarding. I am a registered nurse and have worked at the Peter Lougheed Hospital's ICU unit for 15 years.
2. How have the pandemic and covid affected your work?
When COVID just started in 2020, it was a frightening experience taking care of COVID patients, especially when they needed to be intubated and extubated. Even entering a COVID room was stressful. We had extra precautions to protect ourselves during intubation. All nursing staff tried to minimize the frequency of entering COVID patient’s room by extending IV tubing and placing IV pumps at the door entrance (now we don't do it anymore). During the first wave, lots of COVID patients died alone due to visitation restrictions. Only one family member without close COVID contacts could visit a COVID patient during an end of lives situation. In my career, I have never witnessed such sad situations like this.
Some of the ICU nurses stayed in hotels instead of going back home since they were afraid of spreading COVID to their families. I was also afraid that I would bring germs home and told my family to be prepared if I needed to isolate or if I needed to stay in hotel if the situation got worse at work.
One of my coworker had reminded me that we had worked in ICU for so long and dealt with lots of infectious disease patients. However, we have never got infected so far which its true. Thank God for his protection that my family has not had COVID so far.
In the last two years, our ICU staff haven’t been allowed to take vacation during the waves. We get vacation only when we have low patients rate in ICU, which it's not very many days. We now have to put 2 patients in the same room so the workload is doubled. Recently a lot of nursing staff got sick from Omicron and so staffing is a huge issue at the hospital. Also, lots of ICU nurses have retired or took stress leave during the last 2 years. Shortage of nurses is a problem.
I pray to God to help me at work every shift and to cure my patients so that they could get better soon. I also pray for COVID patient’s family at home.
3. How has the COVID pandemic affected your personal life/family/mental health?
In the last wave I felt upset toward our unvaccinated ICU patients of different ages because it could have been prevented. Also, I felt bad for the double or triple vaccinated immuno-compromised patients. There was a vaccinated immuno-compromised patient who got COVID from her unvaccinated son and daughter in law. When the patient's mother came to visit her sick daughter, she felt so helpless and was very upset.
For our family, initially we were not used to not going to church and not able to see our friends. Zoom meeting are also overwhelming. As a family, we spent more time together and play lots of games, which it's good.
4. What have you learned from your experiences of the pandemic over the past two years and how has this affected your faith?
Recently lots of family/friends around us got Omicron and fortunately, our family so far has been healthy. In the last 2 years, only my daughter and husband got colds once. Otherwise, we have been healthy which it's very amazing how God has protected us. We just rely on him day by day and knowing that only God can help me and family through this. I am also grateful God has given me a peaceful heart during this pandemic.
5. With all the changes that have happened to your family during the pandemic, what is one change you’d like to carry with you into post-pandemic life?
There is not much change in our family but continue to follow God.
6. How can we pray for you?
Please pray for our health and that COVID will be kept away from our family. Please pray that COVID will be gone and that our lives will be back to normal. AMEN!
7. What are some practical ways we can show our frontline workers we care?
We already received lots of love, gifts and kind words from our community. I can’t think of anything more that we need! ❤️.
8. The floor is yours. Is there anything else you want to say?
Our ICU not only filled with COVID patients but lots of suicidal, overdose and alcohol related problems (young) patients. The pandemic has intensified lots of mental distressed patient’s challenges and family violence issues. Please show your kindness to other people and pray for our local community. Thank you ❤️