Pandemic portraits: The people who helped and endured throughout Covid

Susan O'Riordan, who had a miscarriage in September 2020 and again in March 2021, said "it just made me feel alone” as her husband was not allowed to visit her due to Covid restrictions at the time. Picture: Denis Boyle

We were all in the pandemic together but everyone’s experience was somehow unique and filled with different emotions. Some people on those frontlines talked to Eoin English, Niamh Griffin and Neil Michael.

Hospital limits ‘made me feel alone’

For Susan O’Riordan and her family, visiting restrictions in maternity hospitals during the pandemic made two extremely traumatic situations even worse.

She experienced a miscarriage in September 2020 and again in March 2021, and she said despite the best efforts of midwives she was left feeling “alone”.

Unlike during the birth of their first child in 2018, her husband Adam was unable to come into Cork University Maternity Hospital and assist her. “From my point of view, it just made me feel alone,” she said. “One of my friends gave birth in July 2020 and she is still traumatised by what she went through.” 

In May last year, she travelled from West Cork to join other women protesting outside the hospital with maternity advocacy group AIMS Ireland. Protests took place around the country.

Susan O’Riordan’s husband was unable to come and help her in CUMH after she had a miscarriage. Picture: Denis Boyle

“I don’t think we were listened to, there are still restrictions in some hospitals now, it is still going on and the rest of the country seems to be getting back to normal. The fact that it is still happening is so frustrating, I don’t think our protest made a blind bit of difference.”

A separate campaign under the hashtag #bettermternitycare which gathered 62,475 signatures on a petition to ease restrictions is still highlighting problems in some cases which she said is distressing.

“I think the protest helped at the time, it was current for me and it was something for me to focus my anger on as well,” she said.

In her experience, most people agreed with her, but she said a family member who had a baby during the pandemic and is a healthcare worker defended the restrictions. “She thought they were necessary, but anyone who had to actually go through anything that wasn’t a straightforward pregnancy agreed with me.”

A list of visiting restrictions is updated regularly on the HSE website, this shows most restrictions have been lifted for ‘nominated support partners” but parts of some units can be closed at times.

At the start of the pandemic before vaccinations, there were concerns around the safety of women and staff in the hospitals with visiting curtailed to fight this.

A series of global studies including research done at CUMH found elevated risks to pregnant women from the virus. Advocates were devastated when vaccinations did not bring an immediate easing in the rules.

Sanctuary mask initiative

A group of 22 women living in direct provision centres around Cork made over 9,000 masks in four weeks at the start of the pandemic.

It was an “uplifting” communal reaction to a horrible situation, said Dr Naomi Masheti from the Cork Migrant Centre.

“You will remember when the lockdown started there was no PPE whatsoever,” she said.

Dr Naomi Masheti of Cork Migrant Centre, Nano Nagle Place, Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane

“In the direct provision centres no matter how crowded they were, there were no masks, no hygiene products. There were no masks anywhere.”

The women were part of the Friday Women Coffee Morning group at the centre in Nano Nagle Place, and the masks grew organically from this, she said.

As well as the seamstresses, other women helped with ironing or packaging the masks with production overseen by Olga Voytenko, a seamstress and resident of Kinsale Road Accommodation Centre.

The women could not meet together due to the lockdowns so sewing machines were delivered to them, funding from an online public campaign helped with this.

Known as the Sanctuary Mask Initiative, they did not sell the masks, only donating them to DP centres in Cork and 14 other groups like Penny Dinners and St Vincent De Paul.

“It was a really collective kind of thing for them to do,” Dr Masheti said, adding: “even to support other people who are vulnerable at the time was really something for them.” Since then they have come together as The Saoirse Project following many requests for them to sell their masks.

“There was a high market demand for the masks and to take their products to the market, the group transited to a social enterprise,” she said.

The women are just now in the final stages of bringing beautiful tote bags to market. They will be available in Nano Nagle Place and online through a website that will shortly launch.

Unfortunately, some of the women have since been moved out of Cork to centres as far away as Donegal and Athlone, a move they did not welcome as their children had to find new schools.

“I think that was an inhumane thing to do. About six of our seamstresses were moved, just before Christmas,” she said.

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‘Everyone was focused on the residents’

Working in a nursing home during the pandemic meant life on the frontline with a heightened sense of risk and fear among residents and staff for over two years now.

Sandra Farrell, manager at Patterson’s Nursing Home in Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, said “fear of the unknown” was the worst.

“I am most proud of the huge efforts and co-operation of the staff of the home. Naturally, everyone was fearful, particularly in the early stages when information and the necessary PPE were very scarce,” she said.

“In spite of the fear of the unknown, everyone was focused on the care of the residents.” Like other homes, they locked down early with phone calls and the internet becoming the only way residents could communicate with their families.

She helped out in a neighbouring home when they were hit by a large outbreak which left nearly all their staff off sick with the virus within a matter of days.

“There were so many challenges, it’s hard to say which was the biggest,” she said.

Luckily for the residents, the virus was kept out during the early waves and vaccinations pushed that fear back. Until this week when an observant nurse spotted sniffles among one or two residents and antigen tests revealed 10 cases.

“They’re doing good,” she said, praising the vaccines and saying so far all affected have mild symptoms.

The shortage of PPE in early 2020 drove her to contact an old friend in Taiwan who procured a delivery, so much actually that Ms Farrell, in turn, donated this to other homes.

“What started out as a small fundraiser for local nursing homes, gathered huge momentum, and became a well-honed operation,” she said.

Sandra Farrell, manager of Patterson’s Nursing Homes in Roscrea, at her daily swim spot, Youghal Quay on Lough Derg in Co. TIpperary. Picture: Brian Arthur

“Local business people came on board, the bikers groups, local volunteers, funding and supply by a Taiwanese business friend, meant that any Nursing Home in need could be supplied quickly.”

When the pandemic peaked in India last year she used that experience to work with the Cork-based Hope Foundation sending Irish PPE to Kolkata with help from Banaghans & Co and Qatar Airlines.

Like many other women during the pandemic, she took to cold water swimming as a way to clear her head when things got particularly stressful.

“It sounds insane but it was the most sane thing I’ve ever done,” she said of her regular dips in Lough Derg.

‘I couldn’t even hug her for Christmas’

The highlight of Sally Crowley’s pandemic was when her daughter Jessica, 35, came home at Christmas from her Cork nursing home for the first time in two years.

The months of “helpless” window visits were over, they thought, and even though cases are rising again this week, the family remain hopeful the dark days of 2020 are behind them.

“It was brilliant having her because the year before I was only allowed in for an hour on Christmas Day, and I had to place her presents down,” she said.

“I couldn’t even hug her for Christmas. This year was absolutely fabulous, she was thrilled especially seeing her niece and her two nephews.” She said the nursing home did its best but no one had expected restrictions to be needed for so long.

“As a mother, I felt so helpless, I was watching her from the door and even when we were left in, we couldn’t hug. She was close to me and so far away, I just wanted to go over. 

She was crying out to me, and I was trying to fight back the tears so she wouldn’t get upset. As soon as I’d go away then and around the corner, the tears would flow.

Her daughter has a rare form of Parkinson’s and is non-verbal, but they understand each other very well.

“It’s better than what it was, we can go out and take walks. There’s plenty of wheelchair space in Penneys, we can stroll around the place,” she said. “She loves looking at clothes, you can tell by her eyes if she likes something or not, the eye-brows lift.”

Despite their best efforts to avoid the virus, Mrs Crowley caught Covid-19 herself in January just before getting her booster, but it was a mild infection, she said.

Sally Crowley’s daughter is in a nursing home and was able to go home for the first time in two years last year. Picture: Jim Coughlan

They faced another setback this month when Jessica was admitted to Cork University Hospital.

“She was supposed to have been seen in October but they kept putting the appointment off over Covid,” she said.

“It should have been a day operation, and now she’s been over a month in hospital. There goes Covid again, they were trying to protect her. She’s doing good now.” She is planning a welcome home party for Jessica at the nursing home, lots of balloons and two visitors.

The Farranlea Community Nursing Unit has been a “home away from home” for her family, she said, and she is hopeful normal visiting will eventually resume.

Making 12,000 visors in Kinsale

When schools around the country closed as Covid-19 hit, some students at Kinsale Community School turned to making visors and repairing masks.

Between March and June 2020, they made about 12,000 visors for healthcare staff and even took on the huge job of repairing about 10,000 masks that arrived at Cork University Hospital but did not offer full protection.

Students Oisin Coyle and Shane Collins were already fascinated by the possibilities of 3D printing before this emergency and after some diligent research found design ideas for visors approved by the Czech medical council.

Kinsale Community School principal Fergal McCarthy with former student Oisin Coyle, UCC and Leaving Cert student Shane Collins. Picture: Dan Linehan

“You felt you were really making a contribution at a time of national crisis which was really good, and it was the students who offered the first design solution for the face visor. It was they who ran the project,” school principal Fergal McCarthy said.

The school invested in additional 3D printers, the students used their own and later the Kinsale Lions Club and pharma company Eli Lilly came on board to sponsor more units. It was like a “printer farm” in the school, he said.

Fixing the masks was a trickier proposition. “There was a consignment of PPE arrived and some of that, the facemasks were not fit for purpose,” he said.

“We designed and then rectified 10,000 surgical masks otherwise they would have been consigned to the bins. We put a stainless steel strip into them to make them airtight at the bridge of the nose, that was a lot of work.”

The students had great support in the community as well with even the gardaí getting involved to transport parts from Cork down to Kinsale. There was a GoFundMe too with over €13,000 raised for parts when it closed.

They booted up again in late summer to make visors for their own school and feeder primary schools and then eased off.

“The crisis was over then, the supply-lines were opening,” he said. 

We still get calls from dentists who got them at the time looking for them, they’re ventilated in a way that others aren’t.

Some changes, like having the students go for staggered lunches and moving parent-teacher meetings online, have improved the school experience, he said.

“We are very grateful for the fact we appear to be on the other side of it.

‘Memory scarred on my heart forever’

Before Covid-19 hit the nursing home where her mother was resident, Christine Brohan had been in constant contact with her.

Utterly devoted to her, a day did not go by without Christine going to see Kathleen at Carechoice Ballynoe, in Glanmire, Co.
Cork.

When restrictions at the home first arrived, Christine was terrified she would not see her mother but staff at the time made sure not only did she see her daily via a WhatsApp call, but they also regularly updated her on how she was.

It wasn’t ideal because the 85-year-old, who had been in the home since November 2018, suffered from dementia. This made it hard for her to fully understand either what was going on around her or even how WhatsApp calls worked.

That Christine couldn’t even touch her made it painful but they all made the best of it. Indeed, one of the most endearing images of the pandemic is a photograph of Kathleen staring out at her then 10-year-old granddaughter Sarah during a window visit with Christine in the summer of 2020.

Kathleen Thompson greeting her daughter Christine Brohan and granddaughter Sarah at a window of Carechoice Nursing Home, Ballynoe, Co. Cork, in the summer of 2020. Just a few months later, Christine and other family members would be at a window again, unable to do anything but look on as Kathleen breathed her last.

“That day she looked at my 10-year daughter and she called her name,” Christine recalls. “I remember Sarah then looking up at me with tears in her eyes, and saying ‘oh Mam, she said my name, she said my name’.”

Weeks after a change in key staff at the home in December 2020, regular and meaningful contact with Kathleen ceased and by the end of the following month, she was dying.

Christine only found out by accident on January 31 during a phone call with a member of staff she did not know that her mother had contracted the virus.

The home wouldn’t let Christine or her family in to be with her when they realised she was dying just one day after hearing she had the virus.

Instead, they had to watch her die from outside a window looking in during a torrential downpour.

“Never in my worst nightmares did I ever think at the start of the pandemic that things would turn out as horrific for our family as they did,” Christine said.

“The memory of watching my mother slowly die alone through an unopened window will be scarred on my heart forever.”