New London — Donna Whitehouse, a personal care assistant at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, dispenses dignity for a living, helping patients clean and dress themselves, and providing them with whatever else they might need short of medication.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the job’s gotten tougher, Whitehouse said. The tasks are more time consuming, the protocols more restrictive, the distances more frustrating.
But the hardest part is what she’s had to stop doing.
“I dream of the day I can (again) sit on the edge of someone’s bed and simply talk to them,” Whitehouse, 63, of East Lyme, wrote in an email. “I became a PCA a very long time ago (27 years or so) right after my mom passed away. When I watched how the PCAs took care of her I knew right then that’s what I needed to do for a living. When COVID started and it started limiting the time we could spend with each patient ... it breaks my heart.”