Today is Tuesday, the 31st of March, 2020.
Yesterday, we recognized the work of Nino Lombardi, one of two people whom we met in our recent travels who are either working on the front line or directly supporting the front lines in dealing with this pandemic. After returning from Portugal, Nino came out of retirement to provide our communities with vital pandemic response services.
The second person is Lizzie Underhill. Having recently worked as and emergency room nurse, Lizzie flew home to England with plans to work on the health care front lines.
The above image is the current screensaver on Lizzie's cellphone.
We first met Lizzie and her partner, Susan, online. Given that we would be away from home for almost two months, we were looking for someone to take care of our home and our two cats. It had been suggested to Bonnie that she check out the site, trustedhousesitters.com. which is where we met. Since that time and over the period we were in Portugal and they were in Hamilton we've developed a real friendship.
Lizzie trained and has worked as an emergency-room nurse, usually taking night shifts, often the most difficult shift of the day. She was looking forward to experiencing a "Canadian winter" and to finding out what it's like to live in Canada.
As the pandemic developed, Lizzie and Susan decided that they would be better off in England. They were concerned about not having health insurance in Canada when sensible and restrictive Public Health protection changes came into effect and the airports closed.
In the UK, Lizzie would also be able to work, whereas she wouldn’t have been able to in Canada. So she would be able to help out with the emerging situation. For all those reasons they decided to leave early and entrusted our home and our two precious cats to our friend, Mark Hahn, who has taken care of King George and Maddy many times in the past.
Upon returning to their cottage in a small town not far from Birmingham, Lizzie and Susan went in to self-isolation while Lizzie considered her options. She was concerned to work out where she could be the best help, and also where she would be the safest. She values the life she has with Susan, and is not keen to sacrifice herself due to an absence of protective equipment. Especially when the main medical journal The Lancet, has had a campaign for some time to try to persuade the UK Department of Health to buy this.
She recently decided that she could have the most positive impact working at a hospital facility nearby that is in the process of being reconfigured into two zones: a red zone for COVID-19 patients and a green zone for other emergency and intensive care patients that seriously need to be protected from contracting the novel coronavirus. This decision will probably be changed again. There is a coronavirus hospital planned to be opened near Birmingham. If they will look after the staff there, she will probably go and look after her UK based patients there too.
In the meantime, Lizzie continues to offer video-based triage to family and friends who have been experiencing a range of complaints of different severity.