After year filled with loss, hope emerges for future as PBMC commemorates health care heroes A memorial that will be part of a garden outside Peconic Bay Medical Center. (Credit: Joe Werkmeister)
One by one, the hospital staff members approached the monument just unveiled outside Peconic Bay Medical Center and placed a rock at its edge Monday evening. Each rock featured a personal drawing or message representing the past year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Support“
Some featured a remembrance to a life lost. Others gave thanks to the health care heroes who rose to the occasion to treat so many patients who fell ill during a global pandemic.
At two hospitals, sadness in the time of COVID can be overwhelming Shota Mamukashvili, a registered nurse and emergency nurse manager at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital, in front of the Greenport facility’s emergency room. (Credit: Steve Wick)
In the emergency rooms and intensive care units at Peconic Bay Medical Center and Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital, the days are often long, physically and emotionally exhausting and, for some on the staff, excruciatingly sad.
Last winter and spring, COVID-19 was a brush fire that refused to go out. Positive virus cases rose, deaths were commonplace; then summer arrived and things slowed down dramatically.