Honoring health heroes in the JM community

By Alyssa Bardugon

“Heroes work here.” From hospitals to retirement homes to front lawns, this slogan is plastered all over the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Healthcare workers put their safety to the side every day in order to help our community, and it is something that I believe is taken for granted. Having multiple family members working in the medical field, including both my parents, I know the stress that is put on healthcare workers and their families during this time.

I want to share some stories about healthcare workers and their families from our own Judge community to hopefully help us understand the pandemic from a different perspective. 

Zaneta Bulaj, senior Hania Bulaj’s mother, is an internal medicine doctor at St. Marks Hospital. While interviewing Hania about her mother’s experience of being a doctor during the pandemic, I was able to see a side of healthcare that I hadn’t been exposed to before. Due to the pandemic, Dr. Bulaj has to video chat her patients for checkups, which makes it harder to accurately check their health status. Because more and more of her coworkers are testing positive for COVID-19, Dr. Bulaj has much more work to complete than she would if all of her coworkers were healthy and able to go into work. This means more patients, more work hours, and less time to spend with family. 

Lauren Cook, a senior at Judge, has multiple family members working in the medical field, including her mother, Jennifer Cook. Jennifer Cook is the Media Relations Officer at Primary Children’s Hospital and works with the media on all things Primary Children. Because of the pandemic, Cook’s job has shifted to a focus on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the hospital and how that is being relayed back to the media. Cook is constantly on call, working overtime, and waking up at early hours to educate the people on the pandemic. 

The pandemic doesn’t affect just one demographic. It is easy to be caught up in how the coronavirus affects us as high school students, forcing us to sit out on important events in our teenage years. But it also affects others as well, and it is good to remind yourself of others’ struggles during this time.

Lauren Cook said it best, to keep our city safe and stop the spread of Coronavirus. “Keep wearing a mask, keep social distancing. Do it for the countless people who have put their lives on the line to help our community."