By Vania Castro
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the world, many are pushed to work from home to provide for their families. However, frontline and essential workers continue to risk their lives to protect others. At MHS, there are some students with family members who do just that.
One such student is junior Alexis Antonio whose mother, Mernie Antonio, works as a nurse at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. Alexis Antonio recalled how when the virus first broke out, she and her younger sister felt concerned for their mother and feared she could contract the virus. However, Antonio said she started to grow more comfortable and calm after a few months had passed. “Now, I feel a little more confident because she told me how her hospital’s handling it,” Antonio said in a Zoom interview.
Despite being more calm, she said she still felt anxious for her mother, especially whenever she would leave for work. To deal with that feeling, she said she tried to spend more time with her mother whenever she was at home with them.
Alexis praised her mother, mentioning how she has more respect for her. “I was already impressed that she was a nurse,” she said. “Her being willing to put her patients’ lives first and help with COVID inspired me to pursue nursing even more … I don’t think a lot of people would be able to have the right mindset helping patients with this whole pandemic. Not a lot of people would put their life on the line to save other people.”
She praised healthcare workers, saying her respect for them has greatly increased, and she’s pleased they’re willing to put others before themselves.
Senior Ashley Magana echoes Alexis Antonio’s sentiments. Her mother, Maricela Magana, is a doctor at a small clinic in Mexico, where they are currently staying. “I was really scared for my mom because I love her so much,” Ashley Magana said in a Zoom interview. “I have a great bond with her. The idea that something bad could potentially happen to her was scary.” She said her mother spoke of an oath that doctors took to care for their patients. To take that seriously, she said her mother stayed behind to care for patients when many of her coworkers left.
As months passed, Magana said she wasn’t as scared anymore. She said her mom took numerous precautions for the whole family, like taking off the hazmat suit she wore at work, spraying herself with alcohol from a small bottle, and then taking a shower. “She was always reassuring us … She would tell us how many of her patients lived and how many passed away,” she said. “She was one of the doctors who was able to find early solutions and medicine that actually helped.”
Unfortunately, her mother contracted the virus and stopped going to work, but she continues to give patients advice through phone calls, Ashley Magana said. She said everyone in her family tested positive for the virus as well. “She’s been taking really good care of us, and she’s been giving us medicine,” she said. “None of us have been hit hard.” She added that the worst symptom anyone in the family had was a heachache.
Prior to finding out that she contracted the virus, Ashley Magana said she hated the changes the pandemic had brought into her life, as she was unable to hug her mother, who she says is the most important person in her life. Fortunately, she dealt with the changes by finding other ways to bond with her mom. “I started texting her more often, calling her sometimes,” she said. Despite the misfortune of her mom getting sick with the virus, Ashley said there were positive points to living with a frontline doctor. She said her mother was making a change in the world and was the reason so many people went home healthy.
Senior Jenina Fernandez also lives with a frontline worker. Her mother, Annelyn Samson, works as an LVN (licensed vocational nurse) at the Sunnyvale Post-Acute Center. She also lives with her step-father and grandmother, who are essential health care workers in Palo Alto and San Jose respectively. She said her aunt, uncle and father also work in health care, making her family full of essential workers.
Initially, she said she didn’t think too much about her family working on the front lines until they mentioned having a COVID patient and needing to get tested multiple times. “My mom was like, ‘Don’t come close to me,’” she said in a Zoom interview. “Sometimes we’d have to keep our distance from our own family, which is a bit scary.” She said her two siblings shared in that feeling of fear, mixed with a little confusion.
Fortunately, Jenina Fernandez said she worried less because her parents and grandmother either didn’t have a lot of COVID patients or didn’t mention them. In addition, she said they all get tested regularly, which helps calm her. “I just have to trust [my mother] to be safe, ‘cause she makes us stay safe,” she added.
Fernandez said that she appreciates her mother a lot more for her job and that being a nurse has always been difficult, but it’s more worrisome that she has to work during the pandemic. She added that she looks up to her mother for being such a hard worker.“I’ve always admired how many shifts she does,” Fernandez said. “They’re all night shifts. Sometimes she doesn’t get enough sleep because she has household chores; she has to take care of us. She’s just a really hard worker.”
On a lighter note, she said there was an advantage to living with a front line nurse. “When I’m sick I could just ask her, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ and she’s like, ‘You’re fine,’” Fernandez said.
These students are just a few examples of what it’s like to live with a frontline worker, but their stories can serve as a reminder for us to think about health care workers who face constant danger as they continue to work. We should all do our part and follow safety protocols to help the real-life superheroes who continue to fight the virus.