One evening in May, nursing assistant Debra Ragoonanan's vision blurred during her shift at a state-run Massachusetts veterans home. As her head spun, she said, she called her husband. He picked her up and drove her to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm.
It was the latest in a drumbeat of health issues that she traces to the first months of 2020, when dozens of veterans died at the Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, in one of the country's deadliest covid-19 outbreaks at a long-term nursing facility. Ragoonanan has worked at the home for nearly 30 years. Now, she said, the sights, sounds, and smells there trigger her trauma.
Among her ailments, she lists panic attacks, brain fog, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition linked to aneurysms and strokes. Scrutiny of the outbreak prompted the state to change the facility's name to the Massachusetts Veterans Home at Holyoke, replace its leadership, sponsor a $480 million renovation of the premises, and agree to a $56 million settlement for veterans and families. But the front-line caregivers have received little relief as they grapple with the outbreak's toll.
"I am retraumatized all the time," Ragoonanan said, sitting on her back porch before her evening shift. "How am I supposed to move forward?" Covid killed more than 3,600 U.S.
health care workers in the first year of the pandemic. It left many more with physical and mental illnesses — and a gutting sense of abandonment. What .