A Glendale ICU nurse is making a garden to honor his patients who died of COVID-19.
Kyle Schrag, an ICU nurse at Banner Thunderbird Medical Center, says working during the pandemic has been difficult.
“There’s not a lot that we can do. Once a COVID patient gets so sick we spend weeks to get them better. They pass away. That gives a lot of defeat and disappointment and sadness,” says Schrag.
He says prior to COVID-19 about two of his patients would die every week. But when COVID cases peaked in July, he started to lose multiple per day.
“There was just so much death that we were seeing the last few months that I needed to find a way to cope,” says Schrag.
Schrag puts his grief in his backyard. Each time one of his patients dies he buys a plant that is near death and puts it in this garden.
“Plants have allowed me to nurture them and grow them and maybe do that for them in a way that I wasn’t able to do for some of the patients that passed away from COVID,” says Schrag. “I didn’t really realize I was doing it until I was in the middle of the project,” says Schrag.
Now he has 40 plants as the percentage positivity rate is rising. Although it’s not as high as it was in July when COVID peaked last, Some experts say other factors may make it worse.
“We’re not going to have as much healthcare capacity to take care of people. Then you add the flu on top of that, and the fact that the whole country is a hotspot, so the numbers will keep on going up,” says Dr. Shad Marvasti, the Director of Public Health and Prevention at the University of Arizona.
Marvasti says the lack of healthcare workers may put more people at risk of death whether they have COVID-19 or not.
Meanwhile, Schrag is urging people to do all they can to prevent the spread of the virus. He says even one death is too many.
“This is really a humanity issue,” says Schrag.
Remembering the Arizonans we lost to COVID
More than 6,000 people in Arizona have died from COVID-19. Here’s a look back at a few of the Arizonans we lost to the coronavirus.