Day after day, Daniel Ortiz walks into a hospital and treats patients who are struggling with the coronavirus. He hoped he wouldn’t test positive for the virus. But it was, he felt, inevitable.
That fear came true, not once, but twice.
Ortiz’s ordeal started in March, when he was assigned to the COVID-19 unit at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago. Although escaping exposure felt impossible, he took measures to protect his wife, carefully removing contaminated clothing before entering their home and sleeping on the couch.
Still, a coronavirus test in late March came back positive.
“It felt like somebody was constantly hitting me in the head with a hammer,” said Ortiz, who returned to work in early April. At the time, he said, protocol to return to work did not include further testing. Nurses could go back once symptoms subsided after seven days. “I go right to the place that got me sick, that took my power, that took everything.”
Last week, Ortiz’s cough returned. Under new hospital policy, he was tested twice before he could return to work this time.
The first result came back negative. But on Wednesday, two days later, he tested positive.
“I feel like I kind of had a hold on this, I felt like I could control it,” he said. “But today, I just feel like I’m defeated. I’m at the mercy of the virus.”