Two Shelter Islanders on the pandemic’s front lines: R.N.s Kraus and Evangelista on what it’s like

Linda and Chuck Kraus were on their way home from Florida in mid-March when they thought they’d stop off in Savannah, Ga. where a large St. Patrick’s Day parade was planned.

They were both aware of a new and highly infectious virus being reported, but what they saw in Savannah brought home to them that a dangerous era was dawning.

“It was surreal, just empty streets,” Ms. Kraus said.

A registered nurse of 31 years, when she got home to the Island and went back to work at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport (ELIH), she was thrown into a world of change, as she, and her frontline health care colleagues, began a battle against a pandemic.

With the hospital seeing a rapid increase in the number of patients, the staff was “floated to different areas of the hospital,” she said. Assigned to ambulatory surgery and recovery for the last several years, Ms. Kraus had spent 10 years as a nurse in the intensive care unit.

She was reassigned there, while other nurses she worked with went to a newly formed COVID unit.

Prima Evangelista, an Islander and an R.N. for 18 years, experienced the same things in mid-March at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. Speaking one evening last week when she’d just arrived home from the hospital, she said, “We were so crazy busy today,” a refrain said by many health care workers.

March and April and the rest of the spring “was a really scary time,” Ms. Evangelista said. “We had never expected it, and what was worse was it happened so fast. Everything changed.”

Her unit, ambulatory surgery, was closed to accommodate “medical surgery patients,” where she was shifted. She had 15 years’ experience in that specialty of care.

Of real concern was not being absolutely sure patients were not infected, Ms. Evangelista said. “At the time, you couldn’t really tell,” she said. “We didn’t do COVID testing on all patients, unless they had symptoms, because we didn’t have enough testing supplies.”

She described patients being admitted and the nursing staff told they were negative, and then someone would notice them coughing. “The doctor would order an X-ray and the patient would have COVID.”

A major concern for staff was the lack of personal protective equipment in the beginning of the spring surge of patients, Ms. Evangelista said. “N-95 masks were counted and not all of us were allowed to use them unless we were dealing with COVID patients,” she said.

Now that is no longer a worry, she added.

Ms. Kraus, at ELIH’s ICU, noted how “patients went so bad so quickly.” One day they looked like they had a cold. “The next day they were on a ventilator,” Ms. Kraus said.

The two Island nurses said that many of the patients were elderly, from nursing homes and assisted living facilities. “They were so isolated,” Ms. Kraus said. “Many of them confused. Their families were not allowed to be with them.”

What was especially heartbreaking was that, as the only human her patients interacted with, she was “all gowned up, and they couldn’t see my masked face. The only human touch I could provide was with my hands, but I was always wearing gloves.”

Ms. Evangelista remembers trying to comfort a 42-year-old man who had to have emergency abdominal surgery.

“He was crying,” she said, “telling me he wanted to speak to his wife, and he was remembering his children. He was so afraid and so alone.”

She found a phone and asked for his wife’s number. “He spoke to her, still crying, but he was better,” she said.

After surgery he was put in the COVID unit where he recovered.

Besides isolation and fear, COVID forced hospitals and health care workers to abandon some of the people who needed their services the most.

At ELIH “the detox and rehab unit was shut down,” Ms. Kraus said. “It was terrible. A tragedy in itself. People who needed help. But had nowhere to go.”

Being experienced nurses, the staffs relied on them for their institutional knowledge. Ms. Evangelista noted that having worked in various units of the hospital, she knew the computer systems and methods for each one and could guide her younger colleagues.

Ms. Kraus said placing a focus just on her or other nurses was not fair to the efforts of many others who worked so diligently to help people overcome illness and regain their health

“I really want to make it clear that any accolades to be given are deserved by all essential workers. We at ELIH are like family, often taking care of family and our neighbors,” she said. “Support came from the administration, passed on to all the workers, including the medical staff, nursing, housekeeping, pharmacy, respiratory, dietary, radiology, laboratory and all the support services. Everyone gave their best effort, often going above and beyond what they were normally called on to do. We have been working as a team to get us through this pandemic.”

During the Christmas season, she wanted to remember the outpouring of support from the community. “They have lifted our spirits with their numerous acts of kindness and thanks,” Ms. Kraus said.

She was praying for an end to this dark time, so “we’ll be able to move forward with confidence in the knowledge that we can all come together for the good of our community and nation.”

Ms. Evangelista agreed: “We say, ‘We’re all in this together. We can do this.’”