British Health Workers Share How They Have to Isolate from Families to Protect Them Amid Coronavirus Pandemic

Health workers all over the UK are being forced to isolate themselves from their families. Some of them revealed how they’ve had to move away from their loved ones, in some cases, for several months.

Nick Dennison, works as an intensive care doctor on the frontline of the coronavirus crisis, and decided to move into a motorhome to protect his three-year-old son who has lymphoma, a type of cancer.

Dennison is an anesthetist at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey, but now he is working as an intensive care doctor to take care of the most affected Covid-19 patients. Now he has to put them into ventilators/life support machines. Dennison said:

“I have had to make the difficult choice: to do my job and save lives of people I don’t know, or to be with my son whilst he battles cancer… My heart is broken making this decision, but I choose to save the lives of strangers and leave him in the care of my beautiful wife and family.”

STAYING AWAY FROM HOME

Chanice Cushion, is a medical emergency assistant at Southend Hospital, in Essex. She has chosen to live away from home to protect her mother-in-law, whom she lives with and has chronic asthma. Because of this, she won’t be able to see her little girl for the next three months to protect them.

Cushion works as an NHS worker and has made an emotional video urging people in Great Britain to stay at home during the coronavirus outbreak, as she leaves her family to protect her loved ones. She said:

"Protect the vulnerable people that you could potentially be infecting. From the NHS workers, from the doctors, to everybody from everybody. Stay at home."

LEAVING LOVED ONES

Jenny Hawkins is an anesthetist, and also a wife. Her husband has cystic fibrosis so she had to decide to move out to protect him and give all her time to the NHS to get through this as soon as possible. She said she’s giving up her life, so she can use her airway and ventilation skills to help save lives.

She is asking people in the U.K. to be serious about social distancing and staying at home. It’s not about sacrificing themselves just as she has to do now, but, she says, if people stay in she can get home to her husband sooner, when all this crisis ends.