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Buffalo nurse who recovered from coronavirus back on front lines

A nurse who had Covid-19, once recovered, not only returned to work but requested a transfer to a Covid-only hospital, feeling her personal experience would help.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Nurse’s Appreciation Week in 2020 had added significance amid a global pandemic, and it almost goes without saying how grateful society is, for those on the front line in the fight against coronavirus.

While all deserve recognition, 2 on Your Side was contacted by the father of a nurse who contracted the virus but who, far from retreating, charged back into the battle.

In late March Gina Virtuoso, a medical surgical nurse at Sisters Hospital, experienced what she first thought was a sinus infection before she developed a fever and flu like symptoms.

A test confirmed she had Covid-19.

After two weeks of home confinement she recovered and upon returning to work was offered the opportunity to transfer to St, Josephs Care Facility in Cheektowaga, which Catholic Health Systems had set up as the region’s first hospital exclusively for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

“I didn’t have to go there … I wanted to,” Virtuoso told WGRZ-TV.

I feel your pain

Like many health care professionals working in the nation’s hospitals and nursing homes, Virtuoso was concerned about possibly bringing the virus home to her family.

However, she found the steps being taken at St Joseph's to protect staff members to be extraordinary, and because she’d already had the virus and recovered, felt that her personal experience would help the patients there.

Put another way, she would be a nurse who could tell her truly tell her patients that she felt their pain.

“I felt like I could help them and relate to them,” Virtuoso said. “I had a patient the other night who got to talking and she was having really bad headaches. I told her that I knew what she was going through because I had the same thing. She looked up at me, and it was as if she realized that I really did understand.

"So, we talked a while longer, and it seemed to provide a little relief for her to know there was light at the end of the tunnel.”

That also might be just what the doctor (or any nurse for that matter) would have ordered.

Rewarding days and hard ones too

“It’s definitely rewarding to see some of these people recover, get discharged and get on with their lives,” Virtuoso said.

There are other times, however, that can be quite discouraging, when that doesn’t occur.

“It’s very tough because sometimes you get very close to these patients and before all this happened you got very close to their families as well.”

The extraordinary role of nurses

Doctors and nurses deal in medicine and science. But many of them will tell you that the love and support of a patient’s family is also essential in their recovery.

Covid-19 changed that, after Governor Andrew Cuomo prohibited hospitals from admitting patient visitors and family members during the pandemic.

Thus, a husband or wife cannot hold the hand of a suffering spouse, and a hospitalized parent can’t touch the loving face of their child.

Many have languished for weeks before succumbing, without ever getting to see their loved ones or having them at their bedside to offer comfort, or to say a final goodbye.

“A lot of these people are older. They’re scared and they don’t know what to do. So, we’re the ones talking to them and holding their hands,” said Virtuoso.

Nurses are also holding the hands of the patient’s families, if only figuratively.

“A lot of the nurses will facetime with the families and talk to them to assure them their loved one is doing well, and they’re very appreciative of that.

In the face of a pandemic nurses are being labeled as heroes by many.

Virtuoso, while grateful that people may feel that way, doesn’t seem comfortable with the term.

"I don't think of myself as a hero, to be honest with you. I'm doing what I love, and I’d just like to wish all my fellow nurses a happy nurse’s week and say that we’re thankful for you.”

Indeed, aren’t we all?

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