CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020 - 8

COLLEGE

Oriana Cruz, FNP '18

Continued - What we can learn

of 29 and violets from St. Luke's nurses. She will
be given a Military Burial."

1918 OCTOBER 16 TH
"My Birthday: I have barely been getting around.
I know I have the flu, but just keep going. We have
trouble keeping the delirious boys in bed. They
think this is their dorm. Losing corpsmen and 16
nurses ill from Influenza and Pneumonia (plague)."

1918 OCTOBER 21 ST
"We are almost overwhelmed with the influenza
plague which is spreading over London, over
the whole World in fact. There are no vaccines
in London to immunize the command, as is the
custom in infected districts of the USA. I've decided to do something to save my sanity, I am
taking organ lessons from the organists at St.
Anne's Church."

So many nurses sick with
Spanish Influenza we hardly
have enough to keep the wards
going. My voice is gone but I
can now stay with my work
because the chills and fevers I
had the first of the week have
disappeared. I can't keep my
vow to myself to go to bed when
ill - there are too many off at
present."
- Mary Elizabeth Shellabarger

Shellabarger lived through the flu that killed 50 million people worldwide. Perhaps she survived because
she was a little older - 39. Most of those who died
were young adults, in the prime of their lives.
The CU Nursing History Center at the Anschutz Medical
Campus provides a glimpse into the past.

CU College of Nursing | Spring/Summer 2020

Running
Toward Danger
CU NURSING GRADUATE ORIANA CRUZ, FNP,
SERVES ON THE FRONT LINES IN NEW YORK

By Dana Brandorff

or Oriana Cruz, CU Nursing Family Nurse
Practitioner alumna (FNP '18) , she is one of those
rare breeds who run toward danger. And run she
did - all the way to ground zero in New York
City. "When I heard about the need in New York,
I signed up with Krucial Staffing, a traveling nurse
company based out of Kansas," said Cruz. She was deployed
almost immediately to Elmhurst Hospital.
Seen as the "epicenter within the epicenter" of the Covid19 crisis in New York City, Elmhurst Hospital is a 545-bed
facility that serves as a safety net institution for a largely
working-class immigrant population. The coronavirus has
quickly spread through this community, and the hospital
is currently operating at more than 100% capacity. At the
present time, New York leads the country in cases with more
than 161,000 and seven thousand deaths.
Acknowledging that she did not know what she was signing up
for when she did so mid-March, Cruz said, "Until you are in the
midst of something like this, you don't know what you don't

CU Nursing - Spring/Summer 2020

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