Sean C. Morgan
Jasmin (Yoder) Long has been far outside of her element during most of the past month as she helped treat COVID-19 patients in New York City, but she credits God’s strength with carrying her through the experience.
Long, a 2012 graduate of Sweet Home High School is a traveling nurse who works on contract with different hospitals, moving with her husband, Matthew Long, who is a captain and an AWACS navigator in the U.S. Air Force.
Matt Long is stationed in Oklahoma City., Okla., but is on deployment. During that time, Jasmin Long, who graduated from Heston College in Kansas with a three-year nursing certificate in 2015, had been working at Riverbend Hospital in Springfield and staying with her parents in Lebanon. Her contract with Riverbend ended March 7.
“I was home a couple of weeks, feeling useless,” Long said, but then she learned of a nonprofit agency providing emergency relief and seeking nurses to help out in New York City.
She decided to go for it.
“I turned down a travel nurse job about six months ago in Salem because I felt that city was too big for me and that would be too stressful. Then I went to the biggest city in the United States all alone. That’s how I know God called me to do it. I know I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the strength of God and him guiding me every step of the way.”
The change of pace was quick.
“You had to report to New York City in 48 hours if your phone call got through,” Long said. “I wanted to use my skills,” and within two days she was among 500 nurses headed into New York, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States.
“It was kind of like the military,” Long said. “You do what they say.”
Nurses went to work in hospitals, prisons and pop-up tents, she said. She was assigned to a hospital in The Bronx, working 12-hour shifts for 21 days straight. She returned to Oregon on April 26.
What she saw was “absolutely indescribable,” Long said. Upon arrival, she attended a briefing where she was told to “think of the absolutely worst day you’ve ever had as a nurse. I want you to times that by 10 for 21 days.”
That was absolutely true, Long said. She saw a lot of suffering and death – and survivors. She would leave her hotel room on Times Square at 6 a.m. and return at 9 p.m. each day.
“Everything you saw on the news is basically true,” she said. “It’s not a flu.”
What she saw leaves her torn about how to respond to the outbreak at home, she said. She said she understands all sides of the discussions about lifting restrictions and is very concerned about how it’s affecting people.
“It was definitely the hardest thing I’ve every done in my life,” Long said. She would never have been able to complete the assignment except for God’s support and protection.
“It’s completely changed my life,” Long said. “I’ll never be the same. My faith in God has grown dramatically over this. I feel like I was called there.”
Long said she was also thankful for the encouragement and support she had from other people through social media and texting.
“That little bit makes a difference,” she said. She also was in New York “when they turned it blue for healthcare workers,” and she found the emergency sirens and cheering of the people of New York encouraging.
Long has returned to Oregon for a 14-day quarantine, she said. Afterward, she will return to her home in Oklahoma City.