You might imagine this to be the toughest time to be a nurse. But for Nanette Davis, who has been a nurse for three years, even surviving COVID-19 early on in the pandemic hasn’t dimmed her passion for the profession.
“I am so grateful to actually be a nurse during this time,” Nanette said. “I can be a source of comfort to my patients, and it keeps me busy. I’m just very grateful that I have that kind of a job where I can go in and concentrate on other people.”
Nanette said that for her, patients are like family. So when she started to experience allergy-like symptoms back in March, she was eager to get tested for COVID, so she could get the all clear to go back to work.
She remembers she was outside cleaning her car when she got her results. She was shocked to learn she had tested positive.
“I showed my husband and we both sat down and looked at each other like, now what?” she said. “I was more worried about him because he has a liver disorder. Any virus could be really detrimental to him.”
It was a few days later when Nanette really started to feel sick. She would spend the next two weeks on the couch. There were a couple days where she felt really bad, but her son Noah, age 19, had it worse.
Nanette’s son, Noah.
“We took him to the emergency room,” Nanette explained. “They said, ‘No you’re not bad enough.’ They said to him, ‘It doesn’t look like you’re dying, so you can go home.’”
Together, Nanette and Noah got through it. Her husband, Jeff, never showed any symptoms. And Nanette’s patients and families who were tested, all tested negative.
Having gone through COVID, “Take the precautions” is Nanette’s advice. But for those who do contract thevirus, “I would de nitely follow through at the end of itand go to the Red Cross and donate your plasma,” she said.
Nanette said it only took 45 minutes to donate her plasma. “That was kind of an awesome thing. They communicate whether you have the antibodies or not, and whether your plasma is able to help somebody.”
Nanette received an email saying her plasma went to St. Louis and was going to help someone there.
Now that she is healthy and back at work, it’s a bit different with all the new precautions in place. But Nanette knows working in hospice is her calling. It was fellow nurse Jenna Heady that recommended Nanette come to Angela Hospice two years ago.
“We didn’t talk about hospice in nursing school where I went,” Nanette explained. “I didn’t know if I would like it, but I interviewed, and I can’t ever imagine doing anything else. I love it.”
