South Carolina front-line worker, an "old school nurse", dies of COVID-19
'She cared like no other nurse': South Carolina front-line worker dies of COVID-19
Patricia Edwards, 62, worked in the intensive care unit for decades. Her grieving family has created a scholarship in her memory in the hopes of bringing more nurses like her into the field.
When the coronavirus hit the United States, Patricia Edwards' resolve to help patients became stronger than ever.
An intensive care unit nurse for three decades, she had worked the overnight shift her entire career, taking care of the sickest patients in the hospital during the most trying hours of the night. The Greenville, South Carolina, resident knew she was needed in the fight against the pandemic.
But what Edwards, 62, did not know was that the coronavirus would eventually infect her own household, killing her and her mother in the span of a week.
Rosa Lee Hellams, 96, left, died of COVID-19 one week after her daughter, Patricia Edwards, 62, an ICU nurse, did
Edwards is one of more than 670
front-line health care workers who have died from the coronavirus, and her Aug. 19 death has devastated her community, Sherie Gamble, 45, her oldest daughter, said. Since Edwards died, her son and her four daughters have been overwhelmed with calls and online tributes from colleagues, neighbors, friends and relatives of former patients whose lives she touched — inspiring Gamble to create a scholarship in her mother's name.
"My mom was everything to everybody," Gamble said. "We knew how much she was loved, but we didn’t know to this magnitude."
The
Patricia "Nurse Pat" Edwards Nursing Scholarship will go to college juniors and seniors pursuing a nursing degree. Its goal is to bring more nurses into the field who embody Edwards' caring nature, Gamble said.
"Nobody was a nurse like Mama," Gamble said. "She was an old-school nurse, as you would say. She still gave sponge baths to her patients. She cared like no other nurse would care."
Her patients and their families appreciated her tenderness: Over the years, Edwards received many cakes and other goodies as thank you gifts, Gamble said. And Edwards made sure each patient felt they were in good hands. Gamble still remembers the deep connection Edwards formed with an older patient a couple of decades ago who had been visiting from out of town when he fell gravely ill; because he had no family in the area, Edwards took on the role of surrogate relative in addition to nurse for the couple of weeks that he spent in her intensive care unit.
CONTINUED:
Patricia Edwards, 62, worked in the intensive care unit for decades. Her grieving family has created a scholarship in her memory in the hopes of bringing more nurses like her into the field.
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