A nurse battled a COVID-19 outbreak at Luther Acres nursing home. Then she fell ill.

Registered nurse Brynn Faix got called in to Luther Acres on her day off for a burgeoning crisis she feared was an outbreak of the coronavirus.

A supervisor at the Lititz nursing home, Faix, 36, arrived to find several patients feverish, a couple of them with coughs. Some caretakers were scared.

For several weeks in the spring, as other Lancaster County nursing homes scrambled to control outbreaks, Luther Acres managed to dodge the highly contagious virus.

“We thought everything we were doing was working,” Faix recalled.

But on the weekend of April 11-12, the 106-bed facility got slammed. Within a few days, Faix fell ill, too.

On Friday, Lancaster County marks its 100th day since the arrival of COVID-19, a juggernaut leaving heartache and disruption in its wake.

Although early projections of overwhelmed hospitals were off base and the county is shedding many restrictions in moving to “green” Friday, the pandemic’s ongoing impact can only be described as historic.

More than 4,000 have tested positive, and more than 330 lives have been lost, most of them elderly. More than 57,000 lost jobs. Some businesses closed for good. Social services have been stretched to the breaking point. Dreams are deferred.

How this ends is far from certain.

Everyone has a story since March 18, when Lancaster County reported its first case. Faix’s story is compelling for what it says about where we are 100 days into this public health disaster.

While as vital as ever, Faix’s work, and that of other front-line workers, has largely become a backdrop for a society moving on. The risk they take in caring for the sick hasn’t lessened, but their sacrifice is routine and out of sight.

Faix, who supervises a staff of 16, wants the community to know “we’re hurting.”

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‘Body on fire’

On April 16, five days into the crisis at locked-down Luther Acres, Faix got a sore throat. She pooh-poohed it, blaming spring allergies and constant mask wearing.

But later in the day she felt tightness in her lungs.

The place was in “crisis mode,” she said. More residents were reporting symptoms at the same time that some staff was isolating at home.

“A lot of work needed to be done,” Faix said, “and I’m like, ‘I can’t leave.’”

But she also couldn’t continue to deny her symptoms. Faix got tested at an urgent care center.

By the time she got home that evening, her head throbbed, her temperature was climbing and aches wracked her body.

Faix kept to herself in a bedroom of her Lititz home. Her husband, Mike, furloughed from work, attended to her needs while keeping their 5-year-old son, Jackson, occupied. Neither developed symptoms.

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Brynn 1

“I didn’t think about work anymore. They were fighting their war. I was fighting my own.”

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Faix, meanwhile, experienced feverish hallucinations and sweats, an immune reaction that felt like her body was on fire.

“I didn’t think about work anymore,” she said. “They were fighting their war. I was fighting my own.”

Days passed in a blur. In her darkest moments, Faix pictured going on a ventilator. As late as Day 10 her temperature spiked to 105.1 degrees.

“This is it,” she thought. “I’m going to the hospital, and I’m not coming back.”

A friend drove Faix to Penn Medicine Lancaster General Hospital. But just as suddenly as her temperature had spiked, it fell. She got a chest X-ray, intravenous fluids and a diagnosis of mild pneumonia.

Faix slept in her bed that night feeling better, and she continued to improve. On coming out of isolation May 2, she found holding her son an indescribable bliss.

Faix returned to work May 4. She felt a bit unsteady and also guilty for her absence during Luther Acres’ dark weeks when many residents died.

She saw exhaustion in her co-workers’ faces.

“They lost too many battles,” she said. “The pain was palpable.”

Early in June, Faix was buoyed in preparing to donate plasma to treat COVID-19. A transfusion of the antibody-rich blood product could save someone’s life. All it would cost her was a poke in the arm and a bit of time.

But then Faix got a voice message that she had been ruled out as a donor because a test found certain proteins in her blood that could harm a recipient’s health.

The news crushed Faix’s spirits.

Faix, who has been a nurse for 10 years, is reevaluating everything after 100 days of COVID-19.

“Things we used to do that seemed so important don’t seem to matter as much now,” she said.

A deeper appreciation for health, family, hugs. That’s the gift, she said, that the coronavirus has given humanity.

“I hope people focus on what’s most important to them,” she said, “and hold their loved ones tight. Tomorrow is never promised to anybody.”

On the 100th day of the coronavirus, the Faix family will be camping.

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Crédito: JEFF HAWKES | Staff Writer