Northwestern oncology nurse, her cancer patients feared exposing each other to COVID-19, made sacrifices to limit risk

Northwestern Medicine oncology nurse Mary Schneider and her family had no doubt about how Thanksgiving had to look last year as she was working to help patients in a Huntley hospital during chemotherapy treatments.

She could not afford exposing one of them to COVID-19. If a patient undergoing chemotherapy had to quarantine after coming into close contact with a case of the coronavirus and could not come in for treatments as a result, the chances of beating cancer could diminish, Schneider said.

The holiday would be brief celebrated by the Crystal Lake resident heading to her 29-year-old son’s Chicago apartment to drop off a care package for him and chatting outside on his patio while wearing a mask and social distancing.

“It was me, my younger brother, my mom and my dad,” said the son, Chris Schneider. “We hung out for like an hour or two all shivering outside on the patio. It was good to see them, but it was definitely not the way it was before the pandemic. It wasn’t easy.”

They all understood they could not take the risk of sitting closely inside, even as a small family unit, due to the nature of Mary Schneider’s work as a nurse with cancer patients.

“There was never any question at all. That’s the way it had to be,” Chris Schneider said. “My mom is super involved with cancer patients.”

Mary Schneider hasn’t seen her own father in almost a year, she said.

“There is kind of, I would say, a pact, a trust that I’m not going to do anything to put my patients in jeopardy, and so I didn’t go to Christmas, I didn’t go on vacation. Most of us in the cancer center didn’t even trust small groups,” Schneider said.

Stella Sulkowski, one of Schneider’s patients, knew making personal sacrifices during her chemotherapy treatment wouldn’t just be a one-way street.

Sulkowski kept herself from seeing her own children and grandchildren during the pandemic, even after she survived COVID-19 in October, right before she was diagnosed with breast cancer a second time after getting a mastectomy and beating it once already four years ago, she said.

Even knowing she likely had antibodies to protect her against getting COVID-19 a second time, she cut back on seeing her own family to keep herself safe and also in part to make sure Schneider and the other Northwestern Medicine Huntley Hospital staff stayed virus-free.

“You have to be so careful,” Sulkowski said.

It has been hard to stop thinking about the virus while receiving treatment in the Huntley hospital, she said.

“It’s always there, always on your mind, the virus,” Sulkowski said.

Schneider’s family experienced death due to the pandemic, she said.

“COVID-19 has affected a number of us personally. We’ve lost two aunts in my family to [COVID-19]. My father had [COVID-19], my sister-in-law had COVID-19. I know it now professionally and now personally. The winter for us started in July, and even sooner than that, as we all started to figure out what COVID-19 meant to us,” Schneider said.

If she had a chance to talk to someone not following public health experts’ advice during the COVID-19 outbreak, she said she would want to tell them about the personal sacrifices that she, her colleagues in cancer treatment at the hospital, and her patients have made.

When Schneider became fully vaccinated against COVID-19 earlier this year, it lifted a weight off the shoulders of her son and her patients, as well as her own, she said.

“They’re kind of like the heroes of this pandemic,” Chris Schneider said of his mom and other nurses. “I know she’s more protected now so she can continue to help protect others.”