Nurse Sarah Clements reflects on her time in self-isolation after coronavirus diagnosis
Reality of a frontline worker
SARAH Clements, moved to Newbury at the age of 11. She went to Shaw House and St Bartholomew’s School.
She has two brothers, one of whom lives in Hungerford and a sister, who still lives in Newbury.
In 1994 she started her paediatric nurse training in Nottingham before going on to work at Northampton General Hospital, where she has been on the same ward for nearly 23 years.
Ms Clements said: “As a paediatric nurse working within a paeds unit, we are lucky that we have been somewhat sheltered from some of the hard-working conditions and occurances that the adult side are coping with on a daily basis due to the fact that Covid-19 appears to currently affect adults in a more detrimental way.
“As a unit we are doing our best to support the adult side in any way we can.”
On April 1, Ms Clements was diagnosed with coronavirus and she wrote down her thoughts and feelings during her period of self-isolation:
I am a nurse.
I know nothing else.
My children often ask me what I would have been if I wasn’t a nurse... and the honest answer is that I really don’t know.
It’s what I always wanted to be, which makes me one of the lucky ones.
For that reason it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t want to do my bit to fight this fight, despite everything we’ve heard about the invisible danger.
But it’s my job, which I will do no questions asked and I expect nothing beyond the normal in return.
Although I have been really touched by the daily outpouring of public gratitude from complete strangers.
But I don’t feel like I’m doing anything special.
Like all the other amazing people I work alongside, I am simply doing my job.
I have seen this virus from both sides.
On April 1 I tested positive, so I have to self-isolate at home.
It’s been hard having to isolate whilst colleagues and friends are still in the thick of it... feeling desperate to get back, conscious that everything is changing on a daily basis (sometimes more frequently), and I feel out of the loop.
It feels so unnatural to be unable to go to work.
I should be there. I should be helping.
But... the reality is scary. I have put my family at risk just by being at home.
My children are struggling with the way life has become so topsy turvy overnight.
If I’m honest, I’ve struggled too.
Life the way we know it has ceased to exist and we can’t yet see light at the end of the tunnel... we just know it can’t come soon enough.
For the time being I can’t hug my children to reassure them everything will be fine. I can only use words, which is simply not the same.
The news is also all so negative.
It’s difficult to protect children from the reality of what is happening around us.
Especially today, because I had to explain to one of my children that despite my current virus status, I was not going to die.
That I am not going anywhere. That nearly broke me.
I have felt the need to keep secrets for fear of scaring people.
I chose this – nobody else did.
My mum for one, who has been doing her best to make isolation a positive experience.
I reassured her that everything would be okay, but she is dealing with the worry of having two of her four children on the frontline.
She also had no idea that she had been in contact with me when I may have been contagious.
I didn’t tell her until enough time had passed so I knew she definitely didn’t have it, for fear that the truth would cause her stress and anxiety.
I didn’t want her to have to wait with worry to see if all her hard work to prepare for three months in isolation was in vain, because she already had picked up the virus from me.
Thankfully she didn’t.
The truth is lonely.
The truth of this virus is frightening and the truth of this virus is that it doesn’t care.
You, me, my children, families, loved ones, friends.
As a nurse, someone who by definition heals people... I am full of guilt.
Who could I have passed the virus to?
Who have I hurt without knowing?
This is all alien to me, it’s just not what I was trained to do.
I fear I have done the opposite of what I was supposed to do... and that is hard to live with.
Spending time with the ones we love, has all of a sudden become a precious commodity that we had unknowingly taken for granted.
I doubt many of us will look back on this time with fondness – despite being at home, despite being amongst our nuclear families.
It is not the way we would want it and many of our loved ones live outside of our own houses.
It is alienating. It is isolating. It is cruel.
It is indiscriminate and I for one know that I will not be the same person coming out of it.
