New London — Donna Whitehouse, a personal care assistant at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, dispenses dignity for a living, helping patients clean and dress themselves, and providing them with whatever else they might need short of medication.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the job’s gotten tougher, Whitehouse said. The tasks are more time consuming, the protocols more restrictive, the distances more frustrating.

But the hardest part is what she’s had to stop doing.

“I dream of the day I can (again) sit on the edge of someone’s bed and simply talk to them,” Whitehouse, 63, of East Lyme, wrote in an email. “I became a PCA a very long time ago (27 years or so) right after my mom passed away. When I watched how the PCAs took care of her I knew right then that’s what I needed to do for a living. When COVID started and it started limiting the time we could spend with each patient ... it breaks my heart.”

Hospital staff members have to spend as little time as possible in COVID patients’ rooms. If a nurse has to give a patient medications, a personal care assistant may minister to the patient at the same time to consolidate visits. And then there’s the donning and removing of personal protective equipment, or PPE.

“So much time is consumed putting stuff on, taking it off,” said Whitehouse, who’s required to wear a gown, two pairs of gloves, a hair cover, goggles and a face shield when entering a COVID patient’s room. “It doesn’t sound like a lot, but doing it 30 times a day, it’s a big part of my day. The hair cover can stay on (as she moves from one room to the next) but the goggles, the shield have to be cleaned and the gown replaced every time. Even if your patients are in rooms right next door to each other, you have to change everything.”

Whitehouse said she’s responsible for 10 patients on a “normal” day, but can have as many as 15.

“It’s very difficult for everyone concerned,” she said. “Most patients now can’t have any visitors, which is really heartbreaking. Some have contact with family members by computer — Zoom or Skype. We stopped visitors pretty early (in the pandemic), then allowed them, and then at the peak stopped them again.”

Whitehouse regularly volunteers for duty on one of L+M’s two COVID floors, the second of which was added a couple of months ago as the number of coronavirus patients spiked. Linda Hickey, who manages L+M’s nursing float pool, said she can count on Whitehouse to readily deploy to a COVID floor any day she’s working.

“Since the beginning, the nurses and PCAs working on COVID floors have been our champions,” Hickey said. “I can honestly say Donna’s been a poster child for this pandemic.”

When Hickey sought a volunteer to be among the first L+M front-line workers to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Whitehouse’s hand shot up. If Pfizer, the vaccine’s maker, needs an ambassador for the treatment, it would be hard pressed to find someone better suited than Whitehouse, said Hickey, whose own reticence Whitehouse helped overcome.

“I was on the fence about it, but seeing her eagerness to get it helped,” Hickey said. “And then to see she was OK after getting it had an impact as well.”

Days after receiving the shot, the first of two she will receive, Whitehouse had experienced no side effects other than some mild soreness around the injection site.

“I never had any doubts about it,” Whitehouse said of the vaccine. “Actually, I was overexcited when I heard it was approved. ... At first, I was disappointed when I heard it (distribution among workers) was going to be by alphabetical order. But then I heard they were seeking volunteers. Absolutely, I volunteered.”

Given her age and her proximity to COVID-19 patients, Whitehouse said she didn’t want to “push my luck” by delaying a vaccination.

Whitehouse, who has lived alone since March, when the pandemic began, has a grown son, a grown daughter and two grandsons, one of whom has a rare condition that has prevented her from having contact with him during the pandemic. She’s hoping the vaccine will make such contact possible.

The vaccine may also hasten the return of the edge-of-the bed chats Whitehouse misses.

“I like to ask the patients how they’re feeling, and they love to talk about it,” she said. “The ones who are awake, you get to know a little. A lot of them say they were surprised to find they had COVID. They may have just felt lousy and got tested.”

Despite the fleeting nature of her interactions with COVID-19 patients, Whitehouse said she finds each of them special, "like they are my own family."

“I get attached to every single patient," she said. “I used to work in nursing homes, and when someone there passes away, it’s like losing your own family member. I’ve kept in touch with a few (nursing home residents) over the years, and gone to funerals.”

“I have not been with a single COVID patient who has passed away,” she said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com