what my dream job would've been, it would've been

to be a writer for Saturday Night Live.

I was always a very artsy, creative kid.

At 27 I went back to school to be a nurse,

and you see things from a different picture when you're older.

You know that there's a risk, you're confident,

you can handle the concept of death and dying.

But how do you prepare yourself for a pandemic?

My family, that's my Achilles Heel.

That's the chink in my armor.

I used to, you know, pick up food for my kids,

go to the grocery store, and now it's like I come straight home

and I treat myself like I am contaminated.

Get out of your COVID clothes, put them in the wash as fast as you can.

I no longer wear a wedding ring because I'm trying to not have anything get up underneath it.

I'm not wearing jewelry. I'm trying to keep my hair short.

If you cry you just let the tears roll and you don't touch your face.

A few days ago, I spiked a temperature, I got scared,

and I went and I got tested for COVID.

I tested negative, but I let my mind kinda go to dark places.

I sat there and thought about, maybe I need to work on my will.

I'm actually preparing myself to self-quarantine from my family.

And I've never been away from my children.

But it's coming, it's inevitable.

I never imagined that a pandemic would be the reason

why I'm being separated from my kids.

You took an oath to take care of people.

This is what you signed up to do.

But my children didn't sign up to get sick.

My husband didn't sign up to get sick.

Feeling like you are a danger to your own family.

For the first time, I feel really weak and very vulnerable.

It's like they say, you've gotta put the oxygen on your face

before you can put it on someone else's.

And you just want to make sure that you're doing the right things for people.

Last night I was trying to explain to a three-year-old what coronavirus is,

and I was like, you know there's a big germ that's out there that's hurting a lot of people.

And I wanna, you know, snuggle with you more than anything in the world right now

but I need to kind of, stay away.

When this is over, I just hope that they know that I was doing the best that I could.

What kinda keeps me going is knowing that I have purpose.

I feel empowered being around my colleagues.

I think about the patients that need us.

New Orleanians are very tenacious people.

We can survive this.