Hanoi (VNA) – Every time seeing her mother on the mobile phone screen, Sau, the little daughter of nurse Nguyen Thi Thuy, always cries out, asking mummy to come to take her home. For more than two months now, the mobile phone has been the only means for Thuy and her husband to see their little girl.
Mom and Dad are busy with … catching COVID-19
At around 7pm every day, Sau never forgets to get the mobile phone and give it to her grandmother, so that she can talk to her mother, Thuy.
In her talk with us, Thuy, a nurse at the Hepatitis Department in the second facility of the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, said she and her husband have not returned to their home for the past two months. Their small daughter was sent to Thai Binh to live with her grandmother, while the couple are working at two different places in the hospital. Thuy’s husband is also a nurse at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, the Emergency Department. The family’s three members can only talk to each other on the phone.
Their small daughter has gradually got used to being apart from her parents. She urged her parents to quickly catch the COVID-19 so that they can come home with her.
Thuy said this is the first time since they got married five years ago that the couple have been apart for so long a time. Neither have they been away from their daughter for such a long time.
The nurse recalled that she went to work on March 7 as usual. But when a patient in the department was confirmed to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the department was immediately isolated and all staff members were asked to stay in the hospital.
Thuy said this is the first time since they got married five years ago that the couple have been apart for so long a time. Neither have they been away from their daughter for such a long time.
“It is still lucky my husband was not quarantined at that time. He urgently took our daughter to Thai Binh,” Thuy said, adding that since then she always tries to talk to her daughter whenever she has free time.
“Dear wife, please go to the window for me”
Around one week after that, Thuy’s husband, Toan, was also assigned to work in the isolation area at the hospital. He took care of COVID-19 patients in serious conditions.
While at the same hospital, the couple worked in different departments, so they could not meet each other. Sometimes, Toan would tell his wife on the phone: “I miss you so much, let’s go to the window for me to see you.”
Thuy said the days working in quarantine were the most memorable time in her life, with a lot of memories shared with colleagues and family members.
Looking forward to returning home
Thuy said every time a patient tested negative for SARS-CoV-2, she and her colleagues felt very happy, thinking that they were coming closer to the day the pandemic would end and they could go home.
At the peak of the COVID-19 outbreak, there were about 70 patients in her department. The number has reduced to only around 30. Thuy said there were six female nurses in the department, and all of them stayed at the hospital for quarantine and also to take care of patients. Their workload has also increased as there are more and more patients.
Dr. Tran Hai Ninh, Director of the Internal Medicine Department Tran Hai Ninh at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases, said all medical workers are aware that they face a high risk of contracting COVID-19 any time. She added that however, she has got used to it, and found that the work was not as hard as the question of her children “Mommy, when will you come home?”
“We don’t know when we will be able to go home, so we dare not promise our children when we will go home. That is the time we feel down the most during a day,” Ninh said.
Our workload has heaped up since COVID-19 broke out. We all miss our children, but have to put the feeling aside, because if everyone is afraid and go home, who will take care of the patients.
The difficult days have not passed when the COVID-19 pandemic is still showing complicated developments. Vietnam has not recorded new locally-infected cases over recent days, but there have been some relapsed cases.
For the medical staff at the frontline of the battle against the pandemic, they accept sacrifices, including the sadness when having to live far from their children, in order to fulfill their noble mission under the Hippocratic Oath./.
