Vaccine freezer, Christmas cheer, Iditarod trail switch: News from around our 50 states
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December 23, 2020, 9:03 PM·43 min read
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Alabama
Opelika: At East Alabama Medical Center, located about 60 miles northeast of Montgomery, nurses and doctors who have spent months caring for the ill, are doing what they can to get through the holiday season, which many fear will only spread the disease and add to the U.S. death toll that has surpassed 300,000. That means staff members can hang decorations on patients’ doors in the ICU but cannot attend after-work Christmas parties. A cheerful Santa doll stands atop the desk at a nursing station, but big gatherings with relatives are out. A nurse for five years, Nurse Carla Fallin said Christmas just doesn’t feel right this year. She and her husband did not take their two young sons to local Christmas events that drew hundreds of people, many without masks. The decorations in the ICU help lighten the mental load a little, she said, if only until another patient nears death. The decorations are “a way to let family members know that we’re trying, and we love these patients and we want them to feel like it’s Christmas as much as we can,” Fallin said.