My Mum Is A Nurse

My Mum Is A Nurse

By
Chrissy Stockton ,
April 10th 2014

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1. You had to be tough. You might have thought the spill you took on rollerblades was The Worst Thing Ever, but your mom would never indulge you in this. She’d seen far worse and she forced you to keep your injury in perspective.
2. You’ve never been squeamish about blood. Your mom handled every cut and fall with such grace that it never occurred to you that it was something to freak out over.
3. You learned that toughness is a vital part of femininity.
4. Even if you don’t already have kids of your own, you know exactly how you’re going to get them to obey the rules: your mom’s hospital horror stories. Don’t run down the stairs: your mom knows a kid who did that and his leg bent the other way. Don’t go outside without your gloves: frostbite makes your fingers turn black and fall off .
5. For a long time you thought advanced medical knowledge was just part of “mom knowledge.” It wasn’t until you saw a friend call her health insurance’s nurse line that you realized not everyone has this resource at their disposal.
6. You had some, um, interesting toys like (unused) bed pans, needle-less syringes, and hand-me-down stethoscopes to perform surgeries on your stuffed animals with.
7. You prescribe “fluids” and “R.I.C.E.” to your friends when they’re sick or injured.
8. You got your flu shots on the kitchen counter.
9. And then administered “flu shots” to your patient, the family dog. (See #6).
10. There was some point in your life that you’ll never forget where you were at the mall (or wherever) with your mom and someone needed medical help and she was there shouting out things to do while everyone else was panicking.
11. You learned from her at a young age how to handle pressure. Even when people were rude or aggressive she always seemed to know how to shut them down firmly — but without coming across as mean-spirited. She was the boss, simple as that.
12. You never thought twice about women being tough or having a career. Your mom stood her ground with pretentious doctors, drunk emergency room patients and crabby sick people all the time. You heard all these stories and thought she was a kind of superwoman who could handle anything without crumbling.
13. You still call her whenever you have a medical question. In fact, so does your best friend, boyfriend, and roommate.
Your Heart Will Heal—A Gentle Guided Journal For Getting Over Anyone , by Chrissy Stockton, will help you uncover inner peace and the strength to move on. Process every stage of your breakup: shock, denial, grief, sadness, insecurity, and anger while feeling supported and loved through your pain. Make this guided journal your trusted friend during your journey to feeling whole again.
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6:09 AM, March 16, 2020. Bellevue, WA hospital nurse Kathy Leong gets ready for work. The hospital where she works is just a few miles from the Kirkland nursing home that was the epicenter of Washington State's Covid-19 initial outbreak.

Credit:
KUOW PHOTO/Kristin Leong

My 71-year-old mom is a nurse on the front lines of COVID-19. I’m worried. She’s not.

6:27 AM, March 16, 2020. Bellevue, WA nurse Kathy Leong heads out the door to go work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Credit:
KUOW PHOTO/Kristin Leong

© 2022 KUOW News and Information v1.47.1
I asked her if she feels scared going to work since the coronavirus outbreak. She said if nurses are afraid, they won't be able to do their jobs.
My mom has been a hospital nurse for 49 years. Her name is Kathy Leong. She’s a full-time medical-surgical nurse at a hospital in Bellevue, just east of Seattle. She’s only a few miles from the Kirkland nursing home that has been the epicenter of the COVID-19 initial outbreak in the United States.
Because of my mom’s age, her manager has exempted her (as well as immunocompromised and pregnant nurses on their unit) from caring for COVID-19-positive patients directly. But those patients are on my mom’s unit. And even if she’s not directly in contact with infected patients, she and the other exempt nurses are working closely with the nurses who are treating them, being even more attentive than usual as they support their overworked colleagues.
For the nurses who are caring for patients with coronavirus, their workloads and risks have significantly increased. There’s tension on the unit between the nurses that wasn’t there before. The stress is palpable.
Almost every day the nurses on my mom’s unit report to work, the expectations have changed. New protective protocols are added or removed. Guidelines are shifted as the hospital learns more about this virus, or because of a recommendation or order from the governor or CDC. Patients are admitted in waves, their conditions and needs varying widely.
Just the other day, nurses on my mom’s unit were covered from head to shoulders with a yellow tent-like contraption. Scents were blown into the tents while the nurses donned N95 face masks. The hospital was fitting the nurses to the new masks, making sure they couldn't smell or taste the scents blown into the tents. Life is not business as usual for nurses during this pandemic.
For my mom though, she says this is all just part of the job. When I asked her if she’s felt any regret about becoming a nurse since the coronavirus has broken out, she said no. Actually, she said, “Oh heavens, no. No no no no no no no.”
My mom has wanted to be a nurse since she was five-years-old. Although nursing has changed a lot over the past five decades, she still loves it.
As a new nurse in the 1970’s, she said some patients would come in for a few weeks because their doctors had told them “they just needed a rest.” They’d bring books and flowers and settle in for a rejuvenating break. Were those patients annoying? Absolutely. But they weren’t uncommon.
These days, patients in hospitals are in serious condition. Fearful of spreading the virus and facing inadequate numbers of healthcare providers to treat the exponentially growing number of coronavirus patients, hospitals across the country are delaying elective surgeries and urging people to stay away except for emergencies. Masks and beds are in short supply. At my mom’s hospital, they’ve begun talking about reinforcing cloth masks with surgical drape sheets.
Even though space is scarce, my mom says some nursing homes won’t allow their residents to return even after they’ve recovered from COVID-19. The last she heard, those patients are required to test negative for the virus twice before being able to return home. That takes extra time, money, and more tests, which are also in short supply in Washington state, where coronavirus has been confirmed to have infected 2,221 people and killed 110 as of the writing of this story.
Meanwhile, others who are ill but not infected with coronavirus, are being seemingly sidelined in the chaos of this pandemic. Last week, one of my mom’s patients lost his battle with cancer. My mom’s a tough lady. When she talks about her work, she’s matter-of-fact, all business. But as she told me about this patient, she became uncharacteristically wistful. Quietly, she said his death seemed secondary.
“You can’t go up and hug a patient or hug a family if they’re grieving,” she told me sadly, referencing the hospital’s effort to enact the six feet social distancing recommendation.
“I don’t like it,” she concluded. “But we do it. We do what we have to do.”
To listen to my 3.5 minute story featuring my mom reflecting on 49 years of nursing and what it’s like to be a caregiver who can’t give hugs during this pandemic, click the play arrow in the upper right corner.
If you believe you have been exposed to COVID-19, or are a healthcare provider with questions about COVID-19, contact King County's novel coronavirus call center at 206-477-3977 between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. People can also call the Washington State Novel Coronavirus Call Center at 800-525-0127.
Get a quick look at the most important local stories of the day with KUOW's Today So Far newsletter.
KUOW is the Puget Sound region’s #1 radio station for news. Our independent, nonprofit newsroom produces award-winning stories, podcasts and events.

At the end of Women’s History Month, a student describes her mom’s influence on her life.
Growing up, I’ve always been compared to my mother in appearance, personality and for my caring nature. It’s my favorite compliment because my mom is the most influential woman in my life.
The world has deemed healthcare workers modern heroes, which is a truly deserved title, but my mom proved her hero status to me years ago.
By the time I was four and my sister was two years old, my mom had spent three years as a stay-at-home mom. She grew restless at home and began a part-time cashier position at Toys “R” Us, but she knew she had a more fulfilling career path ahead of her.
She was driven by her passion to help people and enrolled at the Community College of Philadelphia in January 2009 to complete an associate degree in Culture, Science, and Technology.
As young kids, my sister and I tended to get in the way of my mom’s schoolwork, often distracting her by making messes around the house and constantly yelling out her name. Still, we sometimes managed to help her.
During the holidays when I was younger, our house was decorated with Christmas-themed stuffed animals on our couch. One day, my sister and I saw my mom talking to them and we thought she looked silly, so I asked her what she was talking about.
She said she was giving the stuffed animals an important presentation because she was anxious about doing it in front of her classmates. Needing to be involved, I ran upstairs, grabbed some of my favorite stuffed animals and plopped myself on the couch, giving her more “people” to practice in front of.
With the encouragement of her family, she never looked back. I was headed into fourth grade and my sister into second grade, so my mom held tightly onto our relationship as she stepped into a nursing career.
She attended Abington Memorial Hospital Dixon School of Nursing in Horsham, Pennsylvania, as a full-time student and full-time mom from August 2011 to May 2013 and earned her diploma as a registered nurse.
My mom then worked for a year as a patient care assistant nurse in the surgical trauma and neurocritical care units at Jefferson Abington Hospital and another year as a registered nurse, charge nurse and medication nurse at The Horsham Clinic in Ambler.
During those years, my mom balanced her day jobs with night classes at Pennsylvania State University working toward her nursing degree, which she earned in August 2015.
I was seven years old when my mom started school and 13 years old when she completed it. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I watched my mom finally realize that she is capable of doing what she loves.
Since 2014, she’s worked as a registered nurse and charge nurse in medical surgical, abdominal organ transplant and transgender units at Temple University Hospital. Recently, she was offered a position in Temple’s cardiac intensive care unit.
During the past two years of the pandemic, my mom has been consumed with work as a nurse at Temple University Hospital, caring for hundreds of COVID-19 patients and silently mourning when many of them passed away. She contracted the virus twice, resulting in the permanent dysfunction of her taste and smell. Although her work can be an emotional rollercoaster, she never faltered in her desire to help people.
Despite the emotional and physical trauma associated with being a healthcare worker during the pandemic, she consistently prioritized her role as a mom.
While she worked draining 12-hour night shifts in the spring of 2020, she spent her free time comforting me. I complained about issues that were small compared to the tragedies in her hospital unit, like losing my senior year of high school due to the pandemic. She validated my feelings, held my hand and lived through isolation with me.
My mom’s constant support encourages me to pursue any path that I love no matter how many times it changes because I know she will be there through every step. Watching her balance the roles of a student, nurse and parent inspired me to know I’m capable of anything I have the will to achieve.
I aspire to be a woman who lives with the same vein of care and dedication as her. My mother has always been a hero, but I am proud to see her now receiving the recognition she deserves.
Sarah can be reached at sarah.frasca@temple.edu. Follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahhfrasca.
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