Covid anniversary: Women on the front line reflect on the past year
- Published
A year on from the first UK UK lockdown, front line workers have been reflecting on the past 12 months
"I said goodbye to my parents for the last time on Mother's Day last year.
"I didn't know if I was ever going to see them again... I just felt as if I was going to war."
A national day of reflection will take place on Tuesday to mark a year since the UK's first lockdown, which saw strict new curbs on life.
As people around the country mark the anniversary, five women working on the front line have been sharing their experiences of the past year.
Facing 'Armageddon'
Dr Ruth Williams caught the virus about the time the UK went into its first lockdown
Dr Ruth Williams is a respiratory consultant at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend.
She caught the virus about the time the UK went into its first lockdown.
"I was probably one of the first to have it," she told Gareth Lewis on BBC Radio Wales.
"We'd seen everything happening in China and Italy and honestly we felt as though we were about to face an Armageddon... it was pretty terrifying."
She said when she was ill with Covid she was also writing up care pathways for this illness: "Of course when I started getting breathless myself I started getting a bit nervy."
She said back in March they were still learning about the virus: "When I got it there was still this feeling amongst people that 'oh you'll be fine as long as you're young' but we were starting to see that that wasn't the case, and then that got really scary."
She said working with Covid patients was like nothing she had faced before: "We'd never seen anything like Covid, how it impacts people and their lungs.
"Still to this day - and I've treated so, so many people with Covid now - it still flummoxes me how it can affect people so differently, one person will get it so severely and others really not at all."
She said she has found it hard to escape the ever-present pandemic: "There's no respite from it because even when you go home, you're in lockdown, you can't go anywhere, even everything on the television is about Covid.
"But for me, the thing that has got me through is my colleagues and the team. Being able to laugh together, take five minutes together."
The year has taken its toll: "I think I have suffered. We've had to work incredibly hard, long hours... we are all desperate to see the light at the end of this tunnel."
But it is the patient success stories that keep her going: "The elation when you actually manage to save someone, that would give us such a high...
"When we managed to get them home, that would make your day if not your week really.
"I've bumped into a few of them coming back for checks and stuff and that is a huge boost to your morale, to have those."
'So emotional'
Dr Nerys Conway says the past year has been really tough
Dr Nerys Conway is a consultant in acute medicine and an associate medical director at Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant, Rhondda Cynon Taf.
She said her father feared losing both his daughters to the virus. "With my sister being a GP... my dad said his biggest fear was that he would lose both his daughters.
"Of course we were actually really worried about them, I just wanted them to stay in the house and not leave basically - which they did do for about three months."
She said March last year was an anxious and emotional time.
"I said goodbye to my parents for the last time, on Mother's Day last year," she said.
"It was really emotional for all of us. I didn't know if I was ever going to see them again, if they were ever going to see me again, or if life would ever be the same again for our family.
"I just felt as if I was going to war.
"I didn't know what was in front of me, I was nervous, really anxious, but at the same time I thought 'come on, you've got to try and do what you can now, this is your job'."
She said she was amazed how quickly the hospital adapted: "The hospital changed, the footprint changed, we all came together and staff began training, we were all just practising, practising, practising ready for those patients to start coming in."
She said she would never forget some of her patients: "The first patient that I admitted to ITU this time last year was a young fit gentleman, no medical problems - he had never even been to the GP.
"He came in and he was critically unwell and went straight to ITU.
"When he left ITU and eventually left the hospital, that was so emotional for me, I'll never forget him, his family, the conversation that I had with his wife on the phone."
When asked, she said there had been days where she felt she did not want to go into work: "Yes, there have been days like that I have to be honest, days where it just feels relentless... you just want to run a million miles, but you can't run away because everyone in the world is being affected by it.
"Some days have just been incredibly challenging."
'A challenging time'
Dr Elise Lang said the past year had been one of collaboration and adapting to change
Dr Elise Lang GP is a partner at North Cardiff Medical Centre, a Macmillan GP advisor for Wales and Macmillan GP cancer lead for Velindre NHS trust.
She said: "There's a slightly trepidatious feeling looking back to where we were a year ago...
"Things have changed dramatically."
She said it had been a year marked by collaboration and adapting to change.
"The collaboration between services and departments in the NHS has been fundamental to getting us all through... all of the team members have had to adapt to new roles, virtual calls, virtual consultations... it's been a challenging time."
It has also been a steep learning curve: "Trying to keep up to date with everything that was being published, everything that we were being asked to do with patients was an endless learning journey.
"We couldn't switch off, at night we're constantly reading messages, updating ourselves with what needed to happen and therefore updating our team as well."
'Isolated'
Rafia Jamil says when she caught Covid it was tough for her family and her work colleagues
Rafia Jamil is a senior GP practice support pharmacist and looks after five surgeries across Powys.
She too got Covid early on.
"It's one of the experiences I probably will never forget, not something I've experienced before," she said.
"Knowing that you've got something which the whole world is dealing with and then also the impact it had on the work I do, on my team and on the family life as well."
Having moved to the UK from Pakistan with her husband 10 years ago, she struggled being so far away from her family: "I just live with my husband and son so we were quite isolated from a support network point of view…
"I literally just lay there on the sofa in my living room - my husband was trying to run the house while doing a job, looking after our son and looking after me as well because I wasn't even capable of leaving the sofa to get a glass of water for myself and everything was literally brought to me...
"It just went on for weeks and a point came when I couldn't cope at home and I was taken to hospital and I stayed a few days there."
She says what she will take from the past year is the strength of her team: "My team has been incredible, especially at the time when I wasn't with them and they kept the service going at pretty much the same level...
"I think my reflection will always be that what a strong team that we've developed over the years which was able to cope with the service demands."
'The third world war'
Rhian Parry says there was "not a lot of sleep going on" at the start of the pandemic
Rhian Parry is managing director of Workplace Worksafe, based in Ruthin, Denbighshire, an independent supplier of health and safety equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE).
Reflecting on last March, she said: "It was absolutely incredible... there's been talk about it being the third world war... it just felt like we went to war every single day...
"We had Glan Clwyd Hospital, Gwynedd Hospital [Ysbyty Gwynedd] ringing us up begging us for PPE.
"The matrons on the ward were absolutely saying 'if you can't get PPE out to us we're not going to be able to protect the patients' - honestly it was just awful."
She said there was "not a lot of sleep going on" as she made calls to Malaysia at 03:00 and calls to the Welsh government at 07:00.
She said they had no choice other than to get on with it: "We went to work every day, we got our heads down and spoke to a tonne of suppliers all around the world and we did our bit in a small way."
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