LENOIR, NC (AP) – Chris Rutledge peels off an N-95 mask from his tired face, revealing the silhouette he leaves behind. His name and a tiny heart are drawn on his face with a black marker so his patients know who he is.
“I look terrible when it comes off,” he jokes as he takes a break during his ninth consecutive day of 12-hour shifts inside a temporary field hospital in Lenoir, North Carolina.
Rutledge, a 60-year-old retired nurse from Lisbon, Iowa, is one of dozens of health workers who have been treating coronavirus patients inside 11 massive white tents set up in the parking lot of Caldwell Memorial Hospital. .
Tents became necessary in late December, when the virus began to spring through this rural community in the foothills of Carolina, overwhelming the hospital’s capacity. The tents were set up earlier this month.
“We doubled the number of patients with COVID in a matter of days,” said Laura Easton, Caldwell’s general manager, who added that the hospital believed it had seen its cases peak during the summer. “And we’ve doubled the hospital census.”
The tents and caregivers have been provided by Samaritan’s Purse, an international charitable Christian relief organization led by Rev. Franklin Graham, an evangelist based in Boone, North Carolina. The 30-bed field hospital consists of four medical rooms and a pharmacy for patients who have been discharged from the hospital’s intensive care unit and do not need ventilators. Four other hospitals, in addition to Caldwell, send patients there so they can use hospital beds for more serious cases.
(January 25)
“The store is a scary place for a person who has never been there,” Rutledge said, referring to patients as they washed their hands for the fifth time in minutes. “Some of them are very tearful and some of us are actually crying.”
But Rutledge describes his work as a blessing. Three years ago, she quit her full-time nursing job to join short-term medical missions with Samaritan’s Purse. When the organization mobilizes its Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), Rutledge can be on a plane in a few hours.
This is not the first time Samaritan’s Purse has provided aid during the pandemic. The organization, which has associations in more than 100 countries, it opened its first COVID-19 field hospital on March 16, 2020, in Cremona, Italy, when the virus began to spread in the United States and around the world. Two weeks later, Samaritan’s Purse stores were set up in Central Park in New York City, where Rutledge and other members of his medical team treated hundreds of patients in collaboration with the Federal Agency for Management. Emergencies and New York State. The charity also recently erected a field hospital in Lancaster, California.
While the work is physically and emotionally strenuous, Rutledge said he does not regret it.
“People asked me if I would do it again after the New York experience and I said I would do it at a heartbeat,” he said.
Rutledge thanks a supportive husband who encourages her from her home in Iowa. She said her religious faith sustains her for most of the long days, along with moments of hope that seem to present themselves when she needs them most.
She smiles as she recalls the elderly couple celebrating their 49th wedding anniversary as they fought the coronavirus together and how her husband drove to his wife’s room to visit her. Rutledge said she cried the first time she saw the couple reunited. She cried again when she was let go home, virus free.
“It was wonderful,” he said.
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