Maimonides Medical Center nurse Sharon Pennycooke was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March 2020. It wasn’t long before the Brooklyn resident was put into an isolation room at the hospital and cut off from family and friends. The only time she saw people was when the nurses took her vitals and brought her food.
“It was very hard to be alone,” she says.
Sharon’s condition worsened and she struggled to breathe. She began thinking about giving up when she came across a LiveOnNY branded pen in her purse. The pens were distributed to hospital personnel to raise awareness about the power of organ donation and feature a light to help nurses take notes in a dark room.
“I pulled out the pen and clicked it and there was a light at the bottom. Along the side it said LiveOnNY,” she remembers. “I was at my weakest point and I thought ‘I have to live on.’ The pen made me think that I had to fight. I thought if I follow that little light, I will get out of this alive. It was one of the things that kept me going.”
Sharon kept fighting and eventually beat the virus. Now she is healthy, happy and back at work.
“The light inspired me and gave me strength. My oxygen level was low and I knew if I got intubated I would never make it out of this. The pen kept me going,” Sharon says. “Every day I think that I could have just been a number, but I got out of it and the pen helped me.”
