NC nurse’s story shows the harsh battle against COVID-19 in new TV documentary
March 21 was the last time Allison Adams was able to hug her 6-year-old son, Preston, or even talk to him in person.
That’s the date that Adams, a Raleigh-based critical care transport nurse, and her husband, a critical care paramedic, left Preston to live with her parents, where they know he’ll be safer as they each work through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adams, a North Carolina native, is one of three people featured prominently in a new PBS “American Portrait” special “In This Together,” airing Friday, May 8, at 9 p.m. While there are dozens of people shown in snippets throughout the half-hour special, Adams — along with a warehouse worker and a COVID-positive woman separated from her newborn twins — is central to the program.
And her worry over her son’s adjustment to the separation is heartbreaking.
We spoke to Adams by phone on Thursday, while she was on her way to work, and she had just talked to her son.
“He was asking me, ‘mommy, you were on TV — how were you on TV?’” she said. She explained how she came to be on the show. He said he remembered, and added, “I thought it was going to be fun to stay here, but I’m ready to come home.”
Adams gave him the only answer she knew to give: “I know you are, baby. I know you are.”
What Preston doesn’t know — and doesn’t need to know — is what Adams reveals in the PBS program: that she and her husband signed over to her parents their power of attorney, in case they get sick, and changed their will to give her sister guardianship, in case of something much worse.
It’s one of the harsh realities of the coronavirus pandemic: healthcare workers, first responders and other essential workers who by the very nature of their jobs are at a much higher risk of getting sick than the rest of us.
It’s an agonizing situation, but Adams said it isn’t all that unusual. She has a coworker who is a nurse in a COVID isolation unit who sent his wife and kids to live with his in-laws in Florida. Two coworkers are living in RVs in their driveways. Another stays at home but isolates herself in a separate bedroom and doesn’t let her child touch her.
“It seems like extreme measures, but it’s really not that extreme,” Adams said. “It’s pretty common to hear, ’Yeah, I sent my kids away.’”
No end in sight
Despite Preston’s occasional low moments, Adams said he has adjusted to life with his grandparents — plus his aunt and uncle and 7-year-old cousin. Adams’ parents live in Apex but have a house on the intracoastal waterway at Surf City, and that’s where they are all hunkered down together.
The three-bedroom house is on a large, isolated lot, so there’s lots of room to run around and play safely.
“He’s having so much fun,” Adams said. “They’re getting covered in mud, and they’re out clamming and digging.”
Adams said her sister has been a big help, coaching Preston through the separation the way she does with her own child when her husband, who is in the military, is deployed.
The big question in Adams’ mind is when they can be together again. But really, no one knows.
“What we thought would originally happen, if everybody did their duty and everything they’re supposed to do, we were hoping that maybe by the end of May … we wouldn’t be seeing so much and we’d be safe, that we would have this controlled,” she said.
“But obviously we don’t have it controlled, so then I mentally prepared myself for a worst case scenario, which was August. … And now it’s just kind of like, when can I at least get a break from work and get a two week quarantine and then go visit him?”
Sometimes, she wonders if there’s another option.
“I keep thinking, should I quit working, or should my husband quit working so he can go be with (Preston) and he can have at least one parent with him? How does that work? Do we change careers? But then changing careers probably isn’t the best thing right now, either.
“If the numbers could just go down, it would change everything,” she said.
‘If we could just band together...’
Adams admits to being frustrated by those who call the virus a hoax or by those who protest for the state to reopen while calling healthcare workers “fake.” She said it happens in her own neighborhood — and we see a bit of that on “In This Together.”
She understands and respects the economic struggle, she said, but there’s a bigger picture.
“I get mad. I get so upset,” she said. “I know the more they protest, the longer people are mixing up together and not social-distancing, the longer it’s going to drag out and the longer I’m not going to be able to see my son.
“It’s not a myth. It’s not some hoax. How do you politicize a virus? How do you politicize the flu? How do you politicize any type of illness? It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like politicizing a heart attack. “
She said she often thinks about how Americans responded during World War II, rallying together for the country by planting Victory Gardens and doing jobs they didn’t normally do, like working in munitions factories.
“I keep waiting for that mentality to come out,” she said. “I know it’s there if we could just band together and think about the greater good.
“It’s just ‘wear a mask and wash your hands.’ It’s just temporary, it’s not permanent. Just do it temporarily so we can get through this and come out the other side and you can go back to your jobs and go back to your life that you had.”
Watch ‘In This Together: A PBS American Portrait Story’
“In This Together: A PBS American Portrait Story” airs at 9 p.m. Friday on PBS (locally on UNC-TV). The special will also stream on all PBS platforms starting Friday.
This story was originally published May 7, 2020 at 5:37 PM with the headline "NC nurse’s story shows the harsh battle against COVID-19 in new TV documentary."
