Shana Hudson is in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in New York City as a nurse at a Manhattan hospital that has multiple floors devoted strictly to COVID-19 patients. (Photo: Courtesy of Hudson)
Profiles During A Pandemic: Hudson on Front Line in NYC
Tuesday, April 21, 2020 | Soccer, Scott Carter
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By: Scott Carter, Senior Writer
Editor's note: This is the latest installment in an occasional series looking at the impact of COVID-19 on current and former University of Florida student-athletes.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – They have been holding ticker-tape parades in New York City since a spontaneous celebration erupted in 1886 for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.
On Tuesday during a conference call with reporters, NYC mayor Bill de Blasio announced that once the coronavirus pandemic passes, the city plans to host the granddaddy of all ticker-tape parades.
"The day is coming where we will overcome this disease,'' de Blasio said. "It will be the greatest of all the parades because this one will speak to the rebirth of New York City.
"We will honor those who saved us."
Former Gators soccer player Shana Hudson will be included in the honorees. On a flight from Tampa to New York earlier this month, Shana Hudson was the only passenger on the plane besides the flight crew. (Photo: Courtesy of Hudson)
Hudson has been in Manhattan the past two weeks working at a hospital at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, serving as an ICU nurse treating infected patients. She said "five or six floors" in the hospital are devoted to nothing but COVID-19 patients. Once the coronavirus began to spread in the United States, nowhere was hit harder than New York City. The flood of sick patients overwhelmed the city's medical community.
"These nurses were tripled or quadrupled with patients, which is extremely unsafe,'' Hudson said. "A lot of these nurses were getting sick, doctors were getting sick, so the care was going down in a lot of ways."
According to the latest figures available Tuesday from the New York Times, New York state leads the nation with 251,720 people infected with COVID-19. Nearly 140,000 of those cases (139,335) were in NYC, including more than 14,000 deaths.
"With the pandemic going on, it kind of pushed me in that direction where New York City was where I needed to be to at least help with the crisis,'' Hudson said Tuesday during a Zoom interview with reporters. "Nurses were drowning. They couldn't keep up with the demand for how many patients they had coming in."
Hudson, who turns 34 next month, was set to start a job in mid-March as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist. She earned her master's degree in December from the University of South Florida and looked forward to the next chapter of her medical career.
However, the coronavirus pandemic disrupted that plan and altered Hudson's immediate future. As her new job continued to postpone her start date, Hudson instead signed a four-week crisis-relief contract as a traveling nurse to help battle the disease in NYC.
"The first week and a half or so it was pretty crazy just trying to adapt to a new environment, not knowing anybody, being a traveler, not really knowing the type of care that we're supposed to be giving to these patients because a lot of them were not surviving very long when they were brought to the ICU,'' Hudson said. "And that's a very stressful environment."
Shana Hudson started the final 63 matches of her Gator career, which included winning the Southeastern Conference title in her final two seasons (2006, 2007).
Hudson was a standout defender for the Gators from 2004-07 after signing with the Gators out of East Lake High in Palm Harbor, playing in 82 games and starting 68 over her career. She majored in criminology at UF but after her soccer career ended, Hudson said she began to focus on a nursing career. She graduated from the University of North Florida with a nursing degree in 2014 and returned to the Tampa Bay area to start her career.
Hudson now lives in Tampa but for the past two weeks has called a Manhattan hotel home when not at the hospital. She walks to and from work and then remains mostly isolated in her hotel room until her next shift.
Dealing with an unusual high percentage of patient deaths while at the same time taking extra precautions to stay healthy herself has been a difficult experience. She wears head-to-toe personal protection equipment each round.
"It's been a challenge for sure. I think when I first got here I was kind of just shocked in a sense. I was pretty numb to everything initially,'' Hudson said. "I feel like now that I'm adapting things are starting to sink in a little bit more. It's been very hard for me mentally. Very morbid."
Lindsay Thompson, a teammate of Hudson's for a season at Florida, was one of the first 50 people in Austin, Texas, to contract COVID-19 last month. She was sick for several days but has fully recovered. Thompson also works in the medical field.
"I can't imagine being right there in New York with everything going on,'' Thompson said. "She's so brave to do that."
Hudson is beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. She said the past couple of days that fewer COVID-19 patients have been admitted at the hospital she works in. She is signed up to work in NYC for the next two weeks and is uncertain if her time there will be extended. Hudson said that whenever her stint is over, she has been instructed to quarantine for two weeks when she returns home.
The urgency of the situation was evident to Hudson from the start.
Hudson in her personal-protected equipment she wears each shift. (Photo: Courtesy of Hudson)
"Basically, as soon as I got here, we had a fast-track one day of orientation,'' she said. "You process whatever you can and then the next day you kind of hit the ground running on the floor. These patients are extremely, extremely sick. You don't have family there at the bedside. The IC [intensive-care] setting that we're in, these patients are intubated with breathing tubes, they're on multiple different drips to control and manage their blood pressure, their sedation, and all that. Normally, you would have family at the bedside because a lot of these patients that are intubated don't end up surviving.
"It was just a big emotional disconnect as far as families being able to say goodbyes to their loved ones. It was very difficult."
Hudson has relied on the perseverance and self-discipline she developed as a soccer player to help her cope in the most difficult moments. She said to help process the emotional toll of the experience, she talks with other nurses and doctors about what they have experienced as they rely on each other for support.
While she never expected to be in New York this spring when she graduated from USF in December, Hudson is coping the best she can.
"It's been stressful in every way. I don't know the city. I don't know the staff. You are trying to learn how the hospital is run while trying to keep your patients alive,'' she said. "It's a very tough position, but I also feel like that it's not every day the world is under a pandemic. If I'm able to contribute to help relieve some of these nurses, then I felt like that when I became a nurse in 2014 that's what I signed up for. That's part of my job."
A job that when the 2020 coronavirus pandemic is over, New York City plans to celebrate.
