Stadium High grad now nursing COVID-19 patients in NY says ‘death is ... overwhelming’
Like so many of us, Sadie Treleven can look back on the precise moment the scope and reality of the coronavirus hit her.
The 26-year-old intensive care unit nurse was in a patient’s room, in full protective equipment, waiting for a doctor. The patient was one of the first COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital where Treleven works, and the family had made the difficult decision to turn off the ventilator — or to let go.
Only the family did so from afar. Like hospitals across the country, Treleven’s had already curtailed visitation because of the coronavirus.
The difficult conversations transpired by phone.
“It was my patient,” Treleven recalled from New York, where the 2012 Stadium High School grad has been an ICU nurse at Harlem Hospital for a little over a year. “I was one of the only people to be with that patient over the last three days, and now they were going to pass away. ... I felt very adamant that I wanted to be in the room.”
The protective gear was the only thing hiding her tears, Treleven said.
“Everything hit me at once. I was standing there, looking out the window at New York City, and this bustling city was shut down,” she explained.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is our reality now.’”
In late 2018, after graduating nursing school and moving to New York, there was no way Treleven — who was born and raised in Tacoma — could have known she would soon be at the epicenter of the U.S. COVID-19 crisis.
The nursing job at Harlem Hospital’s ICU is Treleven’s first.
The coronavirus pandemic is a first for everyone.
To date, there have been more than 12,000 COVID-19 deaths in New York, and 10 times as many confirmed cases — although, by the time you read this, those numbers will almost surely be even higher. On Thursday alone, more than 600 died of the virus. As he has in the past, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described the staggering daily toll as “breathtaking in its pain and grief and tragedy.”
Treleven says Harlem Hospital admitted its first COVID-19 patient on March 12, after weeks preparing for what she described as an inevitable outbreak in the city. She has a photo saved on her phone that reminds her of the date.
Since then, the days and weeks have blurred — with one 12-hour shift bleeding into another. Now, Treleven said, the facility is full of COVID-19 patients.
“If we have an open bed, it won’t be open for very long,” she said.
The midtown Four Seasons is housing medical providers, saving her from her usual subway commute and helping to prevent the potential spread of infection — while also keeping her close to where she’s needed, the hospital.
Meanwhile, Treleven says she has lost track of how many patients she’s watched die from COVID-19.
“I’ve seen more death in the last couple of weeks than I’ve seen in the last year I’ve worked here,” Treleven said. “It’s just such a surreal thing. We’re kind of going on autopilot and having to put the emotional stuff aside.”
“The amount of death is ... I don’t know ... overwhelming at times,” Treleven said. “People are getting really, really sick very quickly, and not everyone is making it. … You almost don’t have time to grieve.”
Treleven’s mother, Marycarol — a longtime Tacoma kindergarten teacher at Manitou Elementary — says she’s “super proud” of her daughter while also being sure to acknowledge that Sadie is “one of the many, many people who are doing this work.”
“She’s a tough nugget, and she wants to be in the middle of the action. She definitely got that,” Marycarol said, describing her youngest of three children as “pretty fearless.”
That doesn’t mean Marycarol — who tries to talk to her daughter once a day — doesn’t have concerns. She worries about the virus and Sadie’s protective gear, sometimes wondering, “How protective is it?”
Given the scale of death and the sheer number of patients dying alone, the potential for lasting trauma for medical providers also scares her.
“I think that’s going to be true for Sadie and for a lot of people,” Marycarol said. “There’s got to be PTSD in this. How could there not be?”
Despite all of it, Treleven says there’s nothing she’d rather be doing right now. Her post on the front lines gives her purpose and resolve. She’s grateful to be helping others, she says, and trying to keep herself safe. She feels like the hospital is learning and getting better at treating patients stricken with COVID-19, and that keeps her going.
The work, she says, helps “keep her sane.”
Treleven often makes decisions based on “gut feelings,” and accepting her first job in nursing at one of New York’s public hospitals felt right.
It still does, Treleven said Thursday, even amid the coronavirus crisis.
Someday, down the road, she hopes to slow down and make sense of it all.
“This is going to define my career, I’m sure. Once we get through this, it’s going to be something that I’m obviously never going to forget,” Treleven said.
“I don’t even know when we’re going to be able to fully process exactly what we’re going through — and what the lasting effects of this will be.”
This story was originally published April 18, 2020 at 12:00 AM.
