Jacklyn Boekeloo Cummings got started with Honor Flight Chicago from a flier she saw at work that was meant to recruit veterans. Instead, it recruited her. Since that day she raised her hand to help honor veterans like her grandpa and her great-uncle, she has been hooked.
“Back when I first started to work in the ER, we had flier in the geriatric section,” she said. “I saw those and applied for it, then did my first flight. I just loved it. I love working with older adults, and I loved honoring their service and seeing them enjoying their day and everything like that.”
On the ground, she has two different roles in the nursing community: one job in an adult ER and another in a pediatric ICU at a different facility. She is seeing the effects of COVID-19 in each, with no end in sight in the near future.
“With the number of patients that have been coming in, the ER has been switching up where they are putting them,” she said. “Every day we get updates on how many. We’re thinking, ‘when is the number going to start going down?’ We’re all just waiting for that down trending to start.
“Both places we have been separating the patients with respiratory symptoms and putting them in a different section. It’s a little different for me because I am six months pregnant right now, but I feel safe. Once we realize a patient has respiratory symptoms, we are immediately isolating. That way they don’t expose other people, and it has made (the staff) feel more safe.”
And though there is not the typical non-COVID-19 traffic that an ER or pediatric unit would see, Jacklyn still sees her fair share of patients without respiratory symptoms.
“People have been staying home for non-urgent things,” she said. “We still get people coming in with chest pains or stroke symptoms, for example, but otherwise people are calling their family doctors like they should be. On the pediatric side, there still are a lot of traumas but again nobody is coming to the ER if it isn’t an emergency. That’s a good thing!”
Also a good thing is the “thanks” Jacklyn and her colleagues have been receiving. Many people have been paying for dinners in the ER, catering in food and such. Several companies have also stepped up to provide meals. Families of patients have been bringing in masks to donate.
“Usually in the ER, people aren’t usually that grateful because they don’t want to be there,” Jacklyn said. “I’s nice to be thanked, but at the same time people in the Armed Forces are doing things that are much more intense than we are when we’re just doing our jobs.”
Whether it is intense or not, we are Honor Flight Chicago are thankful to Jacklyn and her colleagues for continuing to “just do their job” in this time of incredible uncertainty!
“Every day we get updates on how many. We’re thinking, ‘when is the number going to start going down?’ We’re all just waiting for that down trending to start.”