Caring During COVID: Birmingham mom working as a travel nurse in Maryland during pandemic

When Theresa Davis took a travel nurse assignment during the COVID-19 outbreak, she quickly found out it would be the hardest job of her career.

She originally wanted to go to New York, but when that didn’t work out, she was contacted about an opportunity in Maryland.

After leaving her job in February, she took her first travel assignment with the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the nation. She left her home near Lee Branch on April 12 and flew to Maryland for an eight-week travel contract job.

She knew it would entail lots of things that weren’t going to be easy or safe, but once she arrived, she could not believe how bad things were. When she first arrived at Prince George Hospital, she was horrified.

“It was mass chaos,” she said. “I’ve never witnessed anything like that before. Everyone was gowned and scared.”

Shortly after her arrival, she took to Facebook to relay to friends and family back home what she was experiencing.

“Well my friends back in Alabama, I had a big eye-opener today walking into a COVID-19 ICU here in Maryland. I’ve been a nurse a long time and have seen a lot working in CVICU, but this is just terrible! Almost everyone in the ICU here are on ventilators, and all we can do is pray they are strong enough to fight this virus. This is heartbreaking to witness because these people aren’t that old and some are health care workers who have contracted the virus taking care of others. I take my job very seriously, and I hope I can be a blessing to the patients I take care of here. Everyone on this unit has tested positive. I knew it would be scary, and I would be taking a big risk to do this, but you have to understand that someone has to or no one has a chance. Please pray for all of us and stay at home!”

Davis said she was always taught that the patient is the most important thing but was told something different at her new job.

“The first day, the senior nurse said, ‘Who’s number one here?’ And I said the patient. Then she said, ‘You are number one. If you don’t stay safe, you won’t live. They’ll die if we don’t keep ourselves number one.’ Having to put yourself first has been one of the hardest things for me.”

After working a week at Prince George Hospital, she was moved to the University of Maryland Laurel Medical Center on April 20. The hospital was partially shut down in 2018, but the closed parts were reopened so it could serve as a hospital strictly for COVID-19 patients. The governor of Maryland opened up the facility, which will ultimately have 135 beds available, with 400 contracted medical workers. Patients from surrounding hospitals with COVID-19 would be transferred there.

She spent 16 hours stocking and preparing the ICU the day before the hospital was to open and was also chosen to be one of the charge nurses.

In her over 20-year nursing career, she has worked in cardiac ICU and is used to seeing patients get better, not worse. Many of those patients would come in and walk out in five days, so watching this was a long process for Davis. She said so many of the COVID-19 patients are dying, but patients who do live will face other issues, such as having amputations and being on dialysis as a result of the virus.

After her second week, Davis had a few days off in a row and decided to fly back to Birmingham and get her chihuahua, Ella. She wanted to have some company on her off days and when she returns to her hotel after her shift. She’s going to make everything a lot better, Davis said.

“I was starting to get depressed and knew I had six more weeks to go,” she said. “I was starting to see after about two weeks the devastation I was going to encounter, watch patients go downhill so fast.”

Davis is a single mom of three teenage children. Her two sons live with their father in Fayette County and her daughter Karleigh lives with her and attends Oak Mountain High School. Her brother and sister-in-law are watching after Karleigh while Davis is away. The kids were scared when Davis told them she was going and wanted to make sure she came back. However, Davis understood the risk and wanted to go help.

“If I go up there and catch this, I’m alone and no one can see me.” she said. "There are no visitors allowed. I’ll be alone, and my family can’t come help me at all. I may not ever se emy kids again, and I know that. I know God is with me. He is going to help me through this and protect me.”

Davis said all she does is work and sleep. She is scheduled for 48 hours per week, but has been asked to work on her off days also. She has to wear an immense amount of personal protective equipment. In addition to a gown and gloves, she has to wear a surgical mask with an N-95 mask on top of it, protective eye equipment, head covering and shoe covers.

“It’s a lot,” she said. “We have to stay dressed out all the time. It gets really hot really fast and makes you a lot more tired.”

After going from Birmingham to Laurel, Davis said people in Alabama have no idea of the severity of COVID-19. She said she has seen patients with the flu and pneumonia who were intubated and recovered, but this virus is much more aggressive and these patients are dying quickly.

Although her eight-week contract is set to expire in mid-June, Davis said she has been offered a contract extension for an additional eight weeks, staying until August 8th.

“I will say it’s been difficult to be so far away from my children, but I’ve flown back as much as my schedule will permit,” she said.“I told them I would extend only if I could be home for my son’s graduation June 11 at Fayette County High school. No way I could miss that!”

Davis said people should know just because they’re not seeing it in Alabama, it doesn’t mean it can’t happen here. She said she feels much safer at home than she does in Maryland.

“We need to be thankful we’ve been able to be prepared here and it’s not been near as bad,” she said. “Be glad we have been taking the right precautions. It didn’t hit us first, so we were not hit with it so hard. At least we had time to prepare. They didn’t.”