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Some Covid-19 coronavirus patients die without family or loved ones by their side. However, they are not entirely alone. People like nurse Anthea Willemse console them in their final hours.
At Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, 50-year-old Willemse has worked in the same intensive care unit (ICU) ward for 25 years. It was converted to accommodate Covid-19 patients in March and its capacity swelled from eight beds to 48. A month ago, as the pandemic peaked in the Western Cape, up to five bodies were removed from the ward each day.
Willemse usually touches patients nearing their end, with her hands in latex gloves, reads to them from her Afrikaans Bible – Psalm 23 – and sometimes sings songs of worship to them. Often she lies to them because she doesn’t have much of a choice. She tells them everything will be okay.
“Some days tears were just flowing over my cheeks,” she says. “I realised life is so short. And the fact that these patients are passing away, the fact that there are no visiting hours, that there is no opportunity for their families and loved ones to say goodbye. These people leave this world alone, you know. Just with us, people they don’t know – strangers. And sometimes you see how afraid they are. You look in their eyes and you see how uncertain they are.”
Willemse says patients would often ask her what will happen.
“What can we tell them? I just say to them everything is going to be fine. Even though I know it probably won’t be. In a way, I have to lie to these patients. I am not a liar, but I have no choice.”
Rain is pelting down outside as Willemse speaks to Spotlight telephonically at nine in the evening. Her 12-hour shift ended at 7pm, after which she showered at the hospital. Then she drove her Polo the thirty minutes to her home in Mitchells Plain.
Usually her two daughters, aged 30 and 22, don’t cook for her because they prefer their mother’s food. But this evening they treated her to mutton stew, says Willemse. She also has a son aged 13, and two grandchildren who are toddlers. Willemse is the family’s breadwinner.
Read: Nurse Angy Rabothatha, a beacon of light for Tshwane’s Covid-19 cases
Speaking to Spotlight, her sentences are punctuated with endearments, including “my darling” and “my liefie [my love]”.
“The thing is, this virus, it’s so quick,” says Willemse. “You do the observations now. And I mean, literally, you just turn your back. Maybe [you go to] have tea [or] go to the toilet. And when you come back, you see that the patient is wrapped.” Willemse says one is left wondering what just happened.
“Some of them are unconscious, but most are not. Yes, I touch them to comfort them. We wear protective clothes, so it’s safe. We speak to the patients. I sing to them. It’s really scary, my love, because they die so quickly.”
Read: Covid-19: Palliative care needed now more than ever
Each bed in the ICU ward has a cardiac monitor, a ventilator and high-flow oxygen equipment. “Most of our patients, we nurse them on high-flow,” she says. “This is little pipes up the nose. If the patient deteriorates and needs the ventilator, then the doctor will put a tube in their mouth, and then into their lungs. And then the machine supports the patient. It’s like the machine is breathing for the patient.”
Willemse says most of the patients who pass away are elderly, aged fifty or older, with comorbidities such as diabetes.
She contracted Covid herself, but has been back at work for the last month.
“Oh my God, I didn’t have all those symptoms,” she says. “My throat was sore and then I had a cough. I thought, it’s winter time and it’s flu time so it’s normal, even though I didn’t have an appetite for two weeks.” Willemse says she was living on a banana a day and yogurt and ice. “My temperature was down. Later my doctor said to me, the reason I didn’t have a temperature was because of all the ice I ate,” she says.
“One Saturday morning, I just fainted. I got out of my bed, went to the toilet and passed out. My daughters took me to my doctor. He told me that I had a bad lung infection. He put me on antibiotics and suggested that I get tested for Covid too.
“On Monday I was feeling better, but on Wednesday the doctor at Tygerberg WhatsApped me. He said, ‘Boeboe (that’s my nickname at work), I have some bad news for you.’ He offered me a hospital bed, but I declined, saying I’d rather isolate at home and care for myself.
“I arranged for my children to stay with my sister in Athlone, but they refused, saying that if they were to contract the virus, we should all self-isolate together. Thank God they never caught it.
“Most of the time over the next 14 days, I was just lying in the bed. One day, I thought, ‘No man, Covid.’ I was speaking out loud, saying, ‘Covid, I didn’t invite you into my house. I didn’t invite you into my life.’ My son was worried and asked if everything was okay. I told him I was fine and decided right there to put this thing out of my life, out of my house, off my property. So, I got up, had a nice bath and put on a pretty dress. A black dress with pink sandals. I said, ‘Covid, you don’t belong in my house.’ I put it out – I put Covid-19 out.” From that day, she says, she has been up and about and cleaned her house.
About her own lifestyle, Willemse says she doesn’t smoke or drink, but she does have a penchant for takeaways. “According to my colleagues, I’m a little overweight. So ja,” she says.
Willemse is one of six siblings. She grew up in Surrey Estate near Athlone in Cape Town.
Her training was at Zerilda Steyn Memorial Home in Pinelands, where she did a one-year nursing course.
Read: Nurses battling to cope with Covid-19
Why did she become a nurse?
“My sweetie,” says Willemse, “I always wanted to care for people. I said to my mum one day, I want to look after you. That was my calling, being a nurse.”
Willemse says her mum passed away five years ago from lung cancer. “Two weeks before she died, she came home from the hospital. I put in leave from work and looked after her really well for those last two weeks.”
Meanwhile, at Tygerberg Hospital, a sense of triumph is stirring in the Covid ICU ward as the pressure of the pandemic eases.
“Beds are now empty,” says Willemse. “It wasn’t [always] like that. When your patient dies, the undertakers would take the body away and then the next patient was admitted. But now I feel we are starting to overcome this thing. It makes me feel that we are doing something right.
“Besides, now I have antibodies. I’m not scared. I wasn’t even scared at the beginning, because this has been like a ‘lekker uitdaging’, you know, a good challenge.
“I mean, we’ve never been involved in a pandemic like this. So ja, it was actually a good challenge to go to work in the mornings and to look after these patients.”
*This article was produced by Spotlight – health journalism in the public interest
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