“Just because I didn’t walk out hospital with Aaliyah, I felt like I was being punished for that,” O’Donnell said. “That Facebook group showed me that I’m not the only one.”
Aaliyah was named after the R&B singer, one of her mother’s favorite artists. She had a Winnie the Pooh-themed nursery waiting for her in O’Donnell’s home. There was a shelf full of feminist baby books. All are now a reminder of a space she will never occupy, O’Donnell says.
In the hospital, her doula encouraged her to hold the baby she had spent months preparing her home and life for, and to take pictures of the their final moments in her arms.
Aimee Picchi
Special to USA TODAY
Emergency room nurse Louise McLellan recalls her life prior to contracting COVID-19 in March: She liked to kayak with her husband and make her signature cookie – the peanut butter explosion – to bring to work the next day.
Ten months later, McLellan, 53, still hasn’t fully recovered. She struggles to bake, and kayaking is out of the question because of lingering lung problems that leave her out of breath. That made it difficult to perform her job when she tried returning to work in June.
“I lasted two hours,” she recalls.
The physical demands of an emergency room nurse were too taxing to given her long-haul symptoms, she says. And when she asked to switch to a desk job, her efforts went nowhere. In the end, McLellan went on short-term disability.
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