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Treating coronavirus in New York left emotionally, physical toll on Corinth nurse

Video Credit: WTVA ABC Tupelo, MS - Published
Treating coronavirus in New York left emotionally, physical toll on Corinth nurse

Treating coronavirus in New York left emotionally, physical toll on Corinth nurse

This week’s Hometown Hero is Maggie Macias who is a travel nurse.

She treated coronavirus patients in New York City.

Nurse put her life on the line to face covid-19 head on during the peak of coronavirus cases most effected city in the u.s....wtva's erin wilson met with corinth native maggie macias and explains why she's this weeks hometown hero... "every single patient has covid and if they don't they probably do now because they've been in this hospital."

Maggie macias is a travel nurse.

Working in orlando, she got the call to help treat covid-19 patients in boston..

Soon after her supervisor asked if she would volunteer to go the hardest hit area in the country..

New york..

"it was completely voluntary."

Leaving behind a husband and four young children maggie says when she arrived the streets were completely deserted and all she saw was ambulances lining the sidewalks... ((nats)) but the sight inside the hospital was even more shocking "you walk in and the patients were just stacked just rows deep of stretcher as far as you can pretty much see.

You had to move one out in order to get to the next one and it was like that every single day."

So tell me how often did you see death?

"my best shift i had six patients die, my best shift."

Periodically having panic attacks... maggie pushed through until she spoke with the wife of one of her patients "she told me, does your husband take care of you?

And i said yes he does.

And then she said then you guys need to take care of mine, you "she told me, does your husband take care of you?

And i said yes he does.

And then she said then you guys need to take care of mine, you know exactly what i'm going through."

The young patient started to show signs of progression... "this is one of those patients we though we were moving in the right direction we were going down on the vent settings we were starting to do better and then his body started to decompose and he started doing very poorly."

((nats)) "when they called to notify her they said that she just screamed.

That's the that day that i broke down."

In addition to the emotional toll maggie says the nurses also suffered physical pain..

"all of our faces hurt i had a terrible scar on my nose.

It's not often you see nurses cry but there was a lot of situations throughout the day you would just see someone balling" and after 15 days in what felt like a battlefield she decided to come home... "i am so fortunate to have made it this long working in this close of contact with limited ppe so i decided to come home."

After an additional 14 days of quarantine her youngest son couldn't believe his eyes... "they were so excited, they just ran to me and my little one he just look in disbelief because i had been gone technically a month.

So when he saw me he smiled really big and looked twice like is that really her?"

But after working on the front lines of this pandemic... maggie's says she may never be the same..

"i got back home and i was happy to be home but at the same time i think i has survivors guilt, like here i am at home and i'm fine but i know the hospital is still short staff, and another thing, i know this is not going to go away and i told my husband i don't know what i want to do as a nurse right now because i'm




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