Blue Grass nurse helping fight coronavirus in New Jersey

A nurse from Blue Grass is helping fight the coronavirus on the front lines in one of the hardest hit areas of the country.

Janine Leese had to leave her family at home to make the trip from Blue Grass to Old Bridge, New Jersey, but Leese says that she felt like she was supposed to be there.

“The first day that I walked into the ICU here in New Jersey,” Leese said. “The doctor that I met, we introduced ourselves and he said welcome to the war zone. That’s pretty descriptive. The whole hospital when I first arrived was nothing but COVID-19 patients. “I wasn’t working currently as a nurse, and I saw that need. And if that was our community, the Quad Cities, I would want people to come and help be there for us.”

Leese says that the hospital staff not only faces the harsh physical toll it takes on them
but the emotional as well.

“You know we’re there every day fighting for those patients together,” Leese said. “And when we lose one, it’s kind of like losing a member of your family. You’re fighting every day for them.”

But back home, one of Leese’s neighbors, Donna Porter, is taking care package donations at Rich Metals to help Leese in her fight.

“[We’re taking] Cards, notes, just simple things maybe hand cream, laundry soap,” Porter said. “We just wanted to help her out, lift her spirits a little bit. Maybe have a little bit better day at the end of her day.”

You can drop off items for Janine Leese at “Rich Metals in Blue Grass, Muscatine, or Davenport.