Helping hands reach out to doctors, nurses in need with homemade masks

Annette Eaton has to turn an old curtain into a vest and a cape for the music teacher at Sacred Heart Catholic School. There’s going to be a play in April. Well … there was going to be a play in April. Now, who knows.

Like so many things, Eaton’s plans for that old curtain are on hold while she, along with Myra McKnight, Lil Ginger and Patty Cates, are busy making cotton masks to help with the COVID-19 pandemic. Four ladies joining a nationwide surge to answer the pleas of medical providers.

As of Thursday, Eaton has made 51 just by herself in both adult and child sizes. She and Ginger made 16 on Thursday and took a batch to the Cedargate Healthcare nursing home.

Eaton has plans to make and deliver more to Julie Ferguson in St. Louis on Sunday. Ferguson grew up in Poplar Bluff and is a pediatrician with SSM Medical Group in St. Louis. It was her initial phone call to her mom, Mary Farris, that sparked the supply drive.

Eaton said she’ll keep making masks as long as people need them and she has enough supplies. The church has plenty of cotton and Eaton said she’s willing to donate some to others in Poplar Bluff making masks. But she is going to run out of elastic in a matter of days and the stores are in short supply.

“I’m proud that I can do something,” Eaton said. “I feel honored that anyone would think of me and call me to have me do it.”

Ferguson said she and her colleagues at the hospital are currently OK on supplies, but they are going through equipment at an unprecedented rate and foresee the possibility of running out. Protocols are already in place in accordance with guidance from the Center for Disease Control to reuse personal equipment if they can.

Ferguson belongs to a physician moms group on Facebook that has mobilized a supply drive. They said to call dentists, construction workers, hairstylists, anyone who might have or can make masks and gowns. Call schools and ask for hand sanitizer leftover from those back-to-school shopping lists.

So Ferguson called her mom, who then called Eaton.

Annette Eaton (left) and Lil Ginger work at McDevitt Hall to make masks for area health care workers, who are facing a shortage of such neccesities.DAR/Paul Davis

Could people start sewing gowns and masks in accordance with recommendations from the CDC?

Francis brought about 60 masks and two gowns to Ferguson last weekend. Eaton figures she can make one in about 10 minutes, but it’s hard to say exactly because she makes them in batches, assembly-line style.

The 100% cotton masks aren’t as protective as the N95 masks hospitals are running out of, but Ferguson and her colleagues, in theory, could take the cotton mask, put it over the N95 mask, then sterilize and reuse both.

“It is a temporary measure that we hope we never have to get to,” Ferguson said. “This is not where we are now. We are OK right now.”

As of Thursday evening, St. Louis city had 57 confirmed cases and St. Louis County had 173 confirmed cases for coronavirus, with one death in each area. There have been 502 cases and nine deaths in the state of Missouri as of Thursday. However, testing kits are hard to come by.

“For the love of me, I have never seen this in medicine where the United States of America does not have testing,” Ferguson said.

Being a pediatrician presents a unique challenge, Ferguson added. When parents take their sick kid to the pediatrician, pandemic or not, the child often has a fever and flu-like symptoms. But right now, if they test negative for flu and negative for strep throat, Ferguson said sometimes they are referred to a testing center but sometimes they have to presume they have coronavirus, go home and quarantine.

What about the parents? Can they go back to work and maintain their income or is everyone supposed to stay home even though there wasn’t a positive test?

So actual cases and the spread of the virus is ahead of confirmed numbers, but by how much is unknown.

“Sometimes people in Poplar Bluff think they’re isolated because they are in a more rural community. I grew up there, I love it there … the very best thing they can do is stay home,” said Ferguson, who added people need to go to trusted sources and not social media for information.

Butler County has not yet had a positive test with 42 negative tests and five tests still pending as of Wednesday evening. Cape Girardeau County has had three positive tests. Dunklin county has three cases while nearby Carter, Pemiscot, and Scott Counties each have one. A Butler County patient who died Tuesday while under investigation for possible COVID-19 tested negative for the coronavirus.

Butler County Emergency Management Agency Director Robbie Myers said Thursday the county is establishing mask collection sites at Jen’s Diner as well as Bread+Butter in Poplar Bluff. Anyone who would like to donate masks can take them there.

“We’ve had a lot of volunteers wanting to make masks,” Myers said.

Jen’s Diner is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Bread+Butter is open from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. from Monday through Saturday, and from 4:30-7:30 Monday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sundays.

A selection of masks, made by local volunteers, is shown before they are sent to a Poplar Bluff nursing home for staff to wear.DAR/Paul Davis