Without hugs -- 'the universal language of compassion' -- this Wisconsin emergency room social worker's job is harder than ever

"The social distancing is literally KILLING me," Stacey Volkman emails me, and I can feel the pain travel from her computer to mine. "I will admit, I am a social distancing FAILURE."

Stacey is a 41-year-old Froedtert Hospital social worker and mother of two. She lives a life incompatible with distance. She's a hugger. In normal times, it is the medicine she brings to her job in the emergency room.

She hugs the parents of gunshot victims, car crash survivors and many others who are suffering through the worst days of their lives. She's very good at her job.

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I went to see Stacey this week to talk about healing in the age of COVID-19, and the toll the pandemic is taking on our hospital workers.  

I got to know Stacey in 2016 when we flew to Jordan on a medical mission to a Syrian refugee camp. I went as a reporter, an observer, a role she could never play. She went to confront the suffering of the 80,000 refugees in the camp, families of up to 10 living in tin shelters smaller than the average American garage.

The doctors on the mission carried their medical bags. Stacey carried her two arms and her empathy.

Two images endure in my memory from that week-long mission:

In one, I see the children of the camp who followed us everywhere. They had few toys and little to do, and I see Stacey running with them, playing games, hugging them —knowing full well that there are lice crawling over their small bodies.

"Lice are things that can be treated," she told me later. "That can be fixed. You can't just not treat the patient."

In the second image, I see a 44-year-old father of five, breaking down as he describes the seven months of torture he endured in a Syrian prison. He sobs uncontrollably and Stacey hugs him and holds his hand, knowing he has scabies, a highly contagious itching condition caused by burrowing mites.

After several days watching her work in Jordan, I asked how she managed to cut through the great gaps between herself and the refugees — differences of language, culture and life-experience.

"The universal language of compassion," she answered. "Half the time I didn't know why the women were crying. I just went up to them and hugged them. And from the strength with which they hugged me back, I could feel their burden."

When we met this week, she told me her compassion may have its origins in a trauma she experienced as a teenager. At 16, she was involved in a terrible car wreck. She spent seven days in a coma; 30 days in the hospital. She had to learn to walk again.

When she thought back on this period, she felt worst about the worry her accident had caused others, "what I did to my parents."

'I'm not going to push them away'

This year Froedtert Hospital saw its first COVID-19 patient in mid-March and nothing has been the same.

"It's amazing how quickly things changed in the hospital," she says.

The pandemic disarmed her. It is not a time of hugs, but one of masks and personal protective equipment and policies that restrict visitors.

Each morning, after she arrives at work and parks, Stacey puts on a mask before she leaves the car. She passes through security checkpoints on the way to the hospital. Before she enters, she is asked if she has been experiencing any of the familiar COVID-19 symptoms: fever, cough, sore throat.

Stacey seldom goes into the isolation units, except to help with advanced directives and living wills, legal documents that describe how a person's medical decisions are to be made, especially those at the end of life.

She says the hospital made sure the staff was prepared for the pressure of a pandemic. But how does a hugger prepare for a place where hugging is forbidden?

She calls families to let them know a loved one has arrived in the emergency room. Then she must tell them they cannot visit.

"It's very hard," she says. "I feel obviously terrible as I'm putting myself in these families' positions."

She absorbs their anger and grief at not being able to be with their injured loved one.

There are a few exceptions to the strict visitor policy. Patients with confirmed COVID-19 are allowed one visitor a day for a maximum of one hour. Patients who are near death, regardless of the cause, may have two visitors.

More:'It was beyond horrible': Wisconsin hospitals' ban on visitors means coronavirus patients die alone

I asked Stacey what she meant when she called herself "a failure" at social distancing.

"I see the pain in people's eyes. I have a hard time not comforting them," she says. "I don't hug anymore, but I will still place my hand on their shoulder and offer support. Sometimes they'll hug me and I'm not going to push them away."

In the midst of the pandemic, though, much of the support Stacey provides is by telephone. Sometimes she talks with families outside the hospital.

"What's exhausting to me is I don't have the words to make it better," she says.

Stacey listens to the relatives who are angry and reminds herself that it is not personal. They are angry at the situation.

In other cases families leave her dumbfounded.

"One thing that has amazed me is the empathy they feel for me," she says. "Some tell me, 'Thank you. I can't imagine how hard your job is.' "

'I know I give it my all'

When her shift ends in the afternoon, she heads to her car feeling "emotionally wiped." The drive back to her home in Grafton passes quickly. There's little traffic anymore. 

It used to be that when she arrived home, she'd immediately start on dinner and catch up with her two sons, Mason, 12, and Kole, 14.

COVID-19 changed that, too. The first things she does when she arrives home from the hospital is shower. 

At dinner and afterward, Stacey, her husband, Kris, and the boys talk about their days. The boys entertain her with the latest funny videos they've discovered on YouTube.

Stacey runs. She takes walks with her sons. She plays with the family's two goats, Thor and Peanut. 

"When I'm getting ready for bed I start thinking about things, the sad things that have happened," she says. "I never have any regrets because I know I give it my all."

Even then, there are a couple of days every week when she manages to hold everything inside until she is in bed. Then, in the dark, she cries until she falls asleep.

Toward the end of our visit, I asked Stacey again about her feeling that she is failing at social distancing. There is more to it. Hugging is what she does; it's who she is.

Sometimes during the day, she says, when no one else is looking, she and some of her colleagues sneak a hug.

"The way I look at it," she says, "we're all dirty. We all have masks on. Caring for one another is more important than what may happen."