"Everyone, even at home, wears a mask and in order not to distress the children we try to tell it as if it were a game". Pancrazio Tundo works as a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit of the San Gerardo hospital in Monza, and has been living in home isolation for three days. "Life as a 'confined' in quarantine is harder than it seems, but my thoughts are now on colleagues who are on duty. Unity is found in difficulty." Nursind Monza union manager, Pancrazio had just finished the shift last Saturday, when a person suspected of having contracted the coronavirus was identified in his department.
"The confirmation - he tells Ansa - came when I was already at home, so the isolation procedure was started for those who had come into contact with the patient. And I have been stuck here for three days". Like him, to spend these days in quarantine, there are many health workers, 25 only in his department. How is life closed 24 hours a day between four walls? "I'm lucky to have a room and a bathroom for me. My wife has her own business and in these days she keeps it closed because schools are also closed. In addition to taking care of the children, she does the shopping, cooks and disinfects the crockery.
With my three young children, we talk to each other from room to room. We walk around the house with masks but to make them accept them we have tried to find a playful trick, let's pretend we are all masquerading for carnival ". The difficult thing, especially with the youngest, is to make him accept the distance:" the prize is won by those who do not he embraces me. "Living like this is" complicated and unnerving, it seems time never goes by. "But what worries him are his colleagues." Those who are doing crazy shifts to cover the absence of those at home and those, between including mothers who are in hospital quarantine. I wish I could be there to take over. "
Pancrazio decided to become a nurse many years ago: a tiring, underpaid job that requires a long training course, but this, he explains, "has been the toughest test so far". "It is precisely in situations like this, however, that you feel part of a large family, disagreements and disagreements are eliminated. We are a team and, to help patients, we must help each other. Having brought out this feeling - he concludes - is a positive side of this situation ".