News

Laia Turon

PHYSIOTHERAPIST

“I cried a lot and I’m afraid all this will come back, but I would do it again”

ON WAKING UP “They asked why their relatives were not coming. How do you tell them that there’s a global pandemic and that everyone is at home?”

Laia Turon has seen Covid-19 and its dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects up close. She suf­fered from the out­break in March and had only be­come a mother for the first time a few months ear­lier. “I was re­turn­ing from my ma­ter­nity leave on March 9 and four days later we were locked down,” re­calls Laia, who works in the Traf­fic Ac­ci­dent Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion De­part­ment at Santa Cate­rina Hos­pi­tal in Salt.

“I couldn’t be­lieve it. Sud­denly I was look­ing for masks and wear­ing one seven days a week,” she says. She had to make a risky pro­fes­sional de­ci­sion: “Our boss asked who wanted to go to the ICU and I of­fered,” she says, adding: “It was a time when peo­ple needed help. I wanted to do my bit.” Laia worked with Covid pa­tients in very hard phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal con­di­tions for over a month.

“Every­thing was very new and no one knew very well how to treat the dis­ease. We were tak­ing things day-by-day, mak­ing de­ci­sions from day-to-day,” says the 32-year-old, whose pro­fes­sional and per­sonal lives have been deeply marked by the virus. “I wasn’t afraid. I liked to think that being young, if I got in­fected then noth­ing would hap­pen to me. But I wor­ried about bring­ing the virus home . I have a six-month-old girl, who my par­ents were tak­ing care of,” she says. Clearly the risk was there. And that is why Laia took plenty of pre­cau­tions. “I took care every step of the way. It took me 20 min­utes to get dressed and un­dressed,” she says.

The ex­pe­ri­ence has left her with tough mem­o­ries, a price paid by any­one on the front line. “I would cry a lot. Every­thing made you feel in­se­cure. You don’t know if you can help, if the pa­tients will still be there the next day....” Laia re­mem­bers with emo­tion more than a dozen pa­tients who did not re­cover. “I could only relax when I got home. But in the hos­pi­tal, I tried to pro­tect my­self. It didn’t think it was af­fect­ing me that much. I fo­cused a lot on the work, but when I got home I thought: ‘My good­ness, what have I been through today’. Being at home was also like a lux­ury, think­ing about how bad the pa­tients had it,” she ex­plains.

Turon has sto­ries of cases that ended well, and oth­ers that did not. She says that Covid re­vealed ex­am­ples of human strength and also weak­ness. “I treated the fa­ther of a life­long friend. I met him the first day in the ICU, when he was se­dated. When he woke up I told him who I was and he recog­nised me. He be­lieved his grand­chil­dren were dead and had no de­sire to live. But I showed him videos of his grand­chil­dren and told him they were wait­ing for him. Know­ing the truth, being aware, he re­acted and changed his men­tal­ity. I think I gave him strength and en­cour­age­ment,” she says.

Mak­ing pa­tients un­der­stand where they were and why was very com­pli­cated at first, in March and April. Laia also ex­pe­ri­enced this first hand: “they asked why their rel­a­tives were not com­ing to see them. How do you tell them that there’s a global pan­demic and that every­one’s at home?” she says. This type of sit­u­a­tion did not only hap­pen with el­derly pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal. “When peo­ple came in at the be­gin­ning, it all still hadn’t ex­ploded. When they woke up, I told them that they had pneu­mo­nia and that it could spread, but I didn’t tell them the truth. I gave them the light ver­sion and I also had to jus­tify to them why they were so pro­tected there,” says the phys­io­ther­a­pist.

With some per­spec­tive, Laia has a pos­i­tive view of her per­sonal ef­forts and those of her peers in the midst of a health emer­gency, which brought her into con­tact with death. “It was very hard. I never would have thought I’d ex­pe­ri­ence such a sit­u­a­tion. I was sur­prised that all my work­mates re­sponded so well. It brought us all to­gether”, says Laia, who is still un­cer­tain about how the pan­demic will evolve. “When I saw that there could be more lock­downs, the world fell in on me. I’m afraid all this will come back, but I’d do it again be­cause de­spite the fear I think it’s worth help­ing. We health work­ers carry that in­side,” she says. How­ever, she has a final re­quest about pre­vent­ing the drama from be­com­ing more pro­nounced: “In­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­ity is very im­por­tant. Young peo­ple are strong, but they also need to take ac­tion. They have to look after every­one,” she says.

COVID STO­RIES

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