I am an RN Behavioral Health Case Manager at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch NJ. I have 32 years of nursing experience mostly on the medical side of the hospital and thought I had seen it all...until COVID-19.

I started my nursing career in 1988 at the tender age of 23, working the night shift in the Labor & Delivery Unit at a hospital in Toms River NJ. Back then HIV/AIDS was new, frightening, and 100% fatal if you contracted it.

It was a snowing Thanksgiving night when I helped a well known patient to us deliver her baby. She had full blown AIDS, permed hair that was always a little off. She was homeless and lived under the Seaside Heights boardwalk during the warmer seasons, can't remember where she lived when it was cold.

Countless nights prior to her giving birth, she would arrive by ambulance on the pretense of a medical problem.... she was always hungry.... and just wanted a hospital turkey sandwich, jello, and a little can of ginger ale and then be allowed to go on her way.

We worked out a deal with the EMT squad to wait in the ER parking lot while we made sure she and the baby we're good, pack her up some food, and then take her back to the boardwalk. She was often funny, and usually we smelled alcohol. When I asked her why she continued to drink... she always said "Nurse, the water in Toms River isn't safe for my baby so I drink beer.".....if you know anything about Toms River back then she actually had a good idea about not drinking the water....she did the best she could with what limited resources she had....I didn't judge.

On the night she delivered, her smile held no joy and eyes were haunted until she held her baby. After I cleaned her up she told me "I was so scared my baby wouldn't really be born alive, thank you nurse." She was MY patient and I treated her the way I would want my mom, or yours, to be treated.

On the night she delivered, I was terrified inside as I put on all my protective equipment....outside I was steady and calm, to look at me you would have thought it was just an ordinary patient delivering a baby, on a beautiful snowy night in NJ.

My patient never knew how I was feeling as a dried off her baby, covered in the stuff that flows while the baby is born, and placed the baby in her arms. She also never knew the relief I felt when my HIV test came back negative about 3 weeks later.

All that being said, HIV/AIDS was minor league compared to being a Hospital RN in NJ during the Covid-19 pandemic.....not even close.

I won't write in this forum just what it is like to work inside the walls of the hospital, other than to say ....we show up every shift with the same attitude, passion, humor, and sense of purpose that allowed me to give it my all for my AIDS patient that snowy night in 1988.

Please write us a soul shaking, earth quaking, power of Rock and Roll song to be played over the loudspeaker at the start of our shifts. Play it in all NJ hospitals and share it with the State of NJ give us that magical Springsteen HOPE. You inspired a nation after 9-11 and healed our collective soul. No doubt you WILL do it again for a simple and humble Jersey Shore Nurse.

Jersey Shore RN,

Trish RN-BC, BSN
RN Behavioral Case Manager