Second in a series profiling frontline workers of the pandemic
CORNER BROOK — Barbara Park is a frontline worker at Western Memorial Regional Hospital in Corner Brook.
She’s not a doctor, or a nurse, nor does she work directly in patient care.
Park is a cook and in normal times that’s a position in the hierarchy of health-care jobs that she doesn’t think is always noticed.
“We’re just cooks,” said the Corner Brook woman who’s worked at the hospital for 33 years.
But that attitude is slowly changing as COVID-19 has showed that essential workers come in many forms — cooks, cleaners, laundry workers, grocery store workers, restaurant staff, truckers, the people who work in pharmacies and gas stations.
“Now they’re being noticed,” said Park. “It takes a team. We all play a role.”
Over two months in to the changes that have come with COVID-19, Park feels comfortable at work.
“When it first started, I wasn’t,” she says quite honestly.
“Everybody was in a panic mode. Everything was COVID, COVID. And then coming home and watching it on TV and listening for the announcements. I’ve had enough of it. I don’t want to hear nothing about it.”
She’d wake up in the morning and have to do a body scan asking questions about how she felt. Did she have a headache? Was she sneezing? Coughing? Did she feel tired?
“And then you’re wondering did I pick something up, did I touch something that I shouldn’t have touched?”
Because Park is not in direct contact with clients, she's considered a low risk for coming into contact with the virus.
She does, however, have contact with the dietary cages that go to other floors and are handled by other hospital employees who are in contact with clients. So, she has to rely on them to make sure they’re doing everything right in terms of sterilization.
Park goes to work in street clothes and changes into her work attire at the hospital. While at work she wears a mask all day — a hard thing in a hot kitchen — and washes her hands and uses hand sanitizer too many times to count. When her shift is over, she changes back into her street clothes and, once home, everything gets a wash — including her.
While at work, her interactions with others have changed. The group of co-workers, who are like family, used to sit together and play cards on their weekend lunch breaks. Where once there was 10 people around the table, now it’s limited to four.
“You’re missing that, too. Missing the chats,” she said. “You’ve got to do your social distancing.”
Outside of work, COVID- 19 also impacts her personal life.
Travel restrictions meant she couldn’t go to Grand Prairie for her son’s wedding on May 8.
“It broke my heart,” she said. “It’s an important thing.”
Her parents are in their late 80s and she used to help them out by taking them to doctor’s appointments and picking up their groceries.
“Now, I’ve been in my own little bubble and I can’t see my parents. I’m frightened; will I pick something up and will I pass it on to them?”
In her free time, Park enjoys cooking and experimenting with foods, and these days, in an effort to escape COVID-19, she's turned to sewing.
“That relaxes me”
Twitter: @WS_DianeCrocker
