Every day, Mireille Delon's alarm clock rings before 6 o'clock. Her first home visit starts at 6.45 am. Like thousands of nurses and orderlies, she will spend nearly ten hours a day with her patients and will only go home after she sees the last one, after 8:30 pm.
Since COVID-19 hit France, her work has become "more anxious and stressful.” Nothing in her 40 years of experience, including 27 as a nurse, has prepared her for this pandemic.
"There are two of us in the practice. We see between 12 and 15 people a day, some only once, others morning and evening. The majority are elderly people, over 70 years old. My oldest patient turned 100 last year," says Mireille.
For many, a visit from medical staff is the only time they see someone all day. "Families come little or sometimes can't come at all. Everyone is very careful not to contaminate these very fragile people," Mireille explains. Housekeepers or life support workers often no longer come to limit the risk of spreading COVID-19. That further increases patients’ loneliness.
For medical personnel who continue visiting, not spreading the virus among patients whose health is extremely fragile is a constant concern.
"You go out with fear in your stomach. I feel like the virus is there, everywhere. I'm on my guard all the time: when I open a gate, when I press a floor button in an elevator, when I touch the door handles. My anxiety is to carry the virus from one house to another,” Mireille says.
To avoid that, Mireille cleans her car’s door handles, steering wheel and gearshift, every time she gets back into her car. When she enters her patients' homes, she wears gloves, mask and gown. "Luckily, we had supplies in the office, but the masks give me allergies, my face is irritated. But hey, we protect ourselves and above all we protect others as much as we can. The paramedics are often less well-equipped than we are," she explains.
"We thought that, since there's no more traffic jams, we'd make the rounds faster. But with all the precautions to be taken, the tour lasts even longer," explains her colleague, Françoise Boucabeille.
Once she returns home, life is even more complicated. At Françoise's house, four people are working in the medical field: her husband is also a nurse, one daughter, a doctor, and another one, a psychiatric nurse who works part-time in an institution for the elderly and part-time in a surgery.
"We've set up a kind of ‘airlock’ at the entrance, we undress, wash and disinfect everything, we shower twice a day, when we come home from work in the morning and in the evening," says Françoise, who is often exhausted by the work and extra precautions.
Home nurse Mireille Delon rings a doorbell during a home visit in Montpellier, France. Photo © Mireille Delon
Mireille too is worn out by the routine, but sustained by gestures that are often small, but comforting. "The 100-year-old grandmother used to get a visit from Renée, the 94-year-old neighbor downstairs who used to come to play Scrabble. As a precaution, they decided to give up their daily game. But Renée still comes by every evening to deliver a meal tray to her older friend, paying great attention to hygiene and distance. When I see the two of them, it makes me feel better about old age,” Mireille says. The work of caring for others is a profession, but it is also an act of kindness that makes us all human.
