LUBBOCK, Texas — Two Lubbock nurses, Cole Strain and Corey Solis, are embarking on a 21-day mission to aid nurses in Manhattan, New York during the coronavirus pandemic.
As of Monday, New York City has seen over 130,000 cases of the coronavirus. Cole Strain, one of the nurses going on the trip said going to New York had been on his mind the past few weeks.
“I was actually going through Facebook and I have a bunch of friends that are nurses and a couple of them have gone up there, and so I have been following what they’re posting and how things are going up there,” said Cole Strain, who is nurse at Covanent Health. “My heart just really started to hurt for just how bad things really are up there.”
Strain said he is open to helping the hospitals in any capacity to help alleviate the workload.
“My whole point is to go over there and relieve these nurses that are so tired and frustrated and don’t know what else to do at their wits’ end. And that is my goal, is just to help them relieve that anxiety and relieve some of that stress that they have,” he said.
Solis said she has prepared the best she could for the nearly month-long mission.
“It is a lot of anxiety. We have friends down there right now who have been kind of giving us updates on what we are walking into,” she said. “So we kind of already had an idea, but we are full force into understanding what’s going on over there and accepting it and to do what we are called to do.”
