WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — As the COVID-19 pandemic began last winter, Carmen Clarkson began hearing some “negative stuff” on the news.
“I was definitely scared at first,” the 34-year-old White River Junction resident recalled in a February phone interview. “How am I going to do this?”
“This” for Clarkson, a licensed nursing assistant, meant continuing to do her job as a home health aide based out of the Norwich office of Bayada Hospice.
In that role, she cares for people in the last six months of their lives, sometimes in their own homes, sometimes in long-term care facilities. Clarkson helps them get dressed, use the bathroom and shower, and repositions those who are bed-bound. She watches patients for skin lesions such as bed sores and monitors their pain. If she finds a patient is in pain, she reaches out to their nurse to adjust medication.
In summary, she does “whatever it is they need to make them the most comfortable,” she said.
At first, when stay-at-home orders went into place last March as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S., her children’s day care closed.
So, Clarkson, a single mom, had to sort out alternative care options for her young sons, Gabriel, now 4, and Griffin, 2.
She was able to do so in part through the help of her mother and brother, who also live in White River Junction, as well as through temporary child care spots made available for the children of essential workers like her.
Once she got her boys’ care situation at least somewhat settled and she was able to return to work, Clarkson said she quickly learned how to wear the personal protective equipment necessary to keep her patients and herself safe from COVID-19.
She regularly wears a surgical gown, mask, face shield and gloves.
Sometimes she also wears goggles for extra protection, she said.
When she gets home from work, she peels off the layers, puts them in the wash and takes a shower before hugging her boys, she said.
In addition to changes in Clarkson’s own life, her patients’ needs changed due to the pandemic. Some contracted COVID-19 and died from it.
Though her patients all had just months to live for other reasons, the end of life was hastened for those who contracted COVID-19, she said.
It was “so quick,” she said.
It was difficult to watch them struggle to breathe, she said.
Especially difficult were the cases in which families weren’t allowed to be with their dying loved ones.
“Some of these people were dying alone,” Clarkson said. They “weren’t able to have family (or) friends there. That’s what upset me the most.”
In some cases, Clarkson was able to keep her patients company at the end.
“You kind of sort of become their families,” she said.
Fulfilling that role helped strengthen her sense of purpose in her work and helped allay her early trepidation, she said.
“Over the time, I kind of sort of learned to set that fear aside,” Clarkson said. “I’m here for these guys.”
The experiences of this past year have reinforced Clarkson’s conviction that she’s working in the right field.
A 2004 Hartford High School graduate, Clarkson has been a licensed nursing assistant for 14 years.
Her career choice stems from when she was 16 and watched her grandmother Dorothy Strong recover from a severe stroke.
She saw Strong re-learn everything including simple tasks such as brushing her hair and her teeth, Clarkson said.
Clarkson first earned her LNA license when she was in college at the University of New England in Maine and worked in various settings before landing at Bayada last year, shortly before the pandemic hit.
In hospice, she said, “I have found my calling.”
Earlier this month, she passed an exam to become certified as a hospice palliative care nursing assistant.
Bayada recognized Clarkson for her efforts on the front lines by giving her an award last month.
“She is skilled, loving, and passionate about hospice care,” the company said on its Facebook page. “She makes each patient she meets feel truly special. We are so lucky that she is on our team.”
In spite of Clarkson’s commitment and conviction that she’s taking the right career path, being there for her patients this past year sometimes stretched her thin.
She stepped up to help during one outbreak and ended up working seven days a week for several weeks.
Though her boys’ regular day care reopened in mid-July, she relied on help from her family to care for her boys on the weekends, she said.
Just as fewer opportunities for socialization caused her 4-year-old to melt down, Clarkson also saw her patients and their neighbors in long-term care facilities suffer from a loss of their usual activities.
“There was a lot of depression,” she said.
Her patients and other residents of facilities where she works, including nursing homes and assisted living communities, missed seeing their friends and families, playing bingo with their fellow residents and simply taking walks down the hall, Clarkson said.
“It gets lonely,” she said of the isolation she observed.
As rates of COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths have declined, Clarkson has begun looking ahead. She was glad to get vaccinated.
“I didn’t think twice,” she said. “I was willing to do whatever I had to to keep me and my two boys safe.”
She’s hoping to be able to play softball this summer and take her boys on family trips such as to aquariums and on shorter trips to the grocery store.
“It would be fabulous if everybody can be around their families again,” she said.
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
