Having heartbreakingly held the hands of Covid patients so they didn’t die alone during the worst of 2020s pandemic waves, the Royal Melbourne Hospital nurse is now appreciating the most precious gifts life can offer.Depicted as The Angel of Mercy on the front of the Sunday Herald Sun at the height of Victoria’s Covid crisis, Laura became the face of thousands of healthcare workers sacrificing their own welfare to save – or at least comfort – its victims.But after moving to a small coastal town to escape Melbourne’s pressures last year, Laura and fiance Rhowan McLeod-Dryden’s new start was complete when Pia was born on February 3.“This is a total juxtaposition,” Laura, 32, told the Sunday Herald Sun.“I don’t know how to describe it. Amazing.“I feel like a whole new person. This is a whole new life and a whole new meaning.“I look at everything with a completely different view now. I look at everything with sunshine, rainbows and rose coloured glasses now.”Next month Pia will serve as a tiny flower girl when Laura and Rhowan are married in front of their family and friends, a world away from the horrors they shared.Royal Melbourne Hospital nurse Laura Keily tells us what it’s like to care for the sickest of patients who have contracted coronavirusImmediately after overcoming her own Covid illness and being able to leave a hotel room in August 2020, Laura returned to work in the RMH’s Covid unit, where the Herald Sun witnessed the touching but traumatic bedside care of the remarkable nurses.“They deserve all the care and support in the world,” Laura said at the time.“I can’t tell you how many people I have hugged and cuddled like they are my own grandmother and cried.“It is really hard crying under a mask and goggles that you are fogging up.”While the pain of losing so many patients on Covid’s frontline is something she can never forget, Laura said their memories are now driving her and all her colleagues to seize and embrace everything good life can offer.“We all kind of use humour about it and whatnot, but it’s the mass death and the mass emotion that all came with it. It was very unnatural …” she said.“I can remember names, room numbers, timelines of the waves or people as well. “We often talk about them, for all the good things and the sad things.“It feels like yesterday, but also a very different version of me.”Despite moving from Glen Iris to buy their first home on the coast near Tooradin in mid-2021, Laura continued to travel into the RMH so she could continue as an infectious disease nurse at the epicentre of the fight against Covid.“I think we just needed that sort of break,” Rhowan said.“During that 2020-21, the uncertainty of anything and everything created a bit of fear on my side because Laura was so close to it.“But at the same time I knew she was a part of the solution or the prevention of it.“Now we’re at a point where we just know a bit more about the situation so it’s a lot easier to understand.“We are all just going have to go for it, whatever it is in life.”A week after moving to the country Laura became pregnant, forcing her to leave her bedside role and take on administrative duties to protect her unborn daughter.Although it was difficult to leave her vulnerable patients at the time, Laura said the mixed emotions of pausing work altogether for Pia – knowing her colleagues were still under so much pressure – were unbearable.“There was a big sense of guilt when I knew I was leaving and taking maternity leave, but then a big sigh of relief as well,” Laura said.“I still keep in contact with a lot of my colleagues when I’m up doing the night feeds and they are on night shift.“I know where their heads are at now – it’s just relentless. “They miss what they used to do, they miss being a nurse for all our other patients, for all the weird and wonderful tropical diseases we used to treat.“We are now in that period of asking ‘is this just what it’s going to be now?’“Three months ago my old boss said ‘how do you feel about coming back in July, we’re desperate?’“I said: ‘if Pia can come and you have PPE the size of Pia, maybe’. But it’s a bit impossible when you’re feeding.”Once the whirlwind of having a wedding while adapting to life with Pia is complete, Laura is planning to return to the RMH and her desperate colleagues in mid January – but concedes she is having “head verses heart” battle of whether to again hold patients’ hands at their bedside, or take on a management role to safeguard her family.“It sucks. I don’t think I want to return to Covid, I want to go back to my old nursing,” she said.“It does add an extra element now, having Pia, with her safety. It’s not just me I have to look after.“But it’s a totally different ball game now than what it was in 2020 as well and the way we look at Covid is different.”
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