How COVID-19 Changed Me
I had gotten called up by the National Guard and was placed on an immediate assignment to the COVID-19 Task Force that was being set up for the pandemic. I had always heard of the National Guard being there during major catastrophes but had never really thought I would be a part of one during my career due to New Mexico’s lack of natural disasters. I packed my bags, unsure of where I was going and for how long. My first assignment was testing thousands of people all over the state for the virus at mass testing events. That lasted a month before I was reassigned to an alternate care site focused on helping families from the Native American reservations all over New Mexico. We housed families that were all positive that couldn’t stay at home because there were other parts of the family that were also at home and at high risk of mortality. We also housed the opposite, families that were negative but everyone else at home was positive. We monitored these families day and night to make sure we caught trouble before it caught up with them. We were there portal to the outside world, the only faces they saw for weeks and sometimes months at a time. We brought snacks, groceries, toys, and other comfort items to make the days go by faster, especially for the smaller children. Day and night, the “Batphone” as we called it would light up with text messages or phone calls, alerting us to a family member who had gotten sick suddenly that we would have to get transported to a hospital. Sometimes they came back. Some of them we never heard from again. Over the almost 4 months I was there, our staff grew very close to these families. Everyone who stayed with us was so appreciative for us being there but at the time I really didn’t feel like we were doing much. Every day mimicked the day before.
It was until one day when we were making our afternoon rounds that I felt why we were there. Two of our patients were standing in the doorway with tears on there faces. The husband and wife were crying while thanking us for saving there lives. We didn’t do much. It was just a phone call a few days before to get an ambulance because they were having trouble breathing. They had since returned and were doing better. They explained why there emotions were so high is because of the positions that they held in there pueblo. They were elders that were responsible for passing down the legends and traditions of there people to the younger generations. They were the safeguards to thousands of years of history. They went on to explain that there history isn’t written down and that it is up to every member of the pueblo to learn from those that came before them. After hearing what they had to say and completing our rounds the director of our site explained that it was not just that one couple but most of the elderly couples and families that we had were the last bastion of traditions and customs for there people. If COVID had wiped them all out due to them being at high risk, there culture would have been seriously affected. I then realized that we had actively participated in the preservation of history by keeping these people alive and well.
In twenty years maybe this story will be written down somewhere as one of the great efforts to mitigate the spread of a pandemic and prevent it from decimating an entire population. Or maybe it will be an oral tradition of the power of humanity to come together and do something right that has a positive affect in the world. I hope this story replaces the negative of what also happened during this time in the summer of 2020. Right now I haven’t taken any steps to preserve this story except through conversation if it comes up. This story matters because these people matter. There culture matters. There traditions matter and it could have easily been lost if the pandemic did what it wanted to do and kill off the old and the sick.
