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Maggie Hendrickson has been a health care worker since 2002, starting as a nursing assistant at age 16. 

Now 30 years old, she works in breast imaging at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. She has several roles in her department, but one of its essential functions can be summed up in a sentence: “We’re basically the first step in diagnosing breast cancer.”

Like health care workers worldwide, Henderickson’s life has been transformed by the coronavirus pandemic — from the major to the minute. 

Among the major, Hendrickson said she would easily complete 15 biopsies in a day before COVID-19. Now, the most she’s done is three.

Even in the breast imaging unit, Hendrickson said they need to make extra time for deep cleaning and disinfect 

 after a patient is in a consultation room.

A smaller change is wearing masks and face shields, which bring a set of smaller challenges.

Hendrickson and her colleagues have found that the protective equipment traps sound around their heads.

“It’s really loud in there,” she said, so “you need to be loud.” 

Halitosis was another unexpected problem for Hendrickson.

“There's been a lot of gum because when you have to wear a mask, you sure smell your own breath a lot,” she said.

Her go-to chew is wintergreen — “the blue stuff.” She has also taken to brushing her teeth after lunch. Despite a career in health care, mask-wearing is new for Hendrickson. 

“I've never had to wear a surgical mask for eight hours a day before in my life,” she said. 

The constant tugging and rubbing of the mask bands was making her ears raw. 

That’s where her mom, Justine Wettschreck, stepped in, from 180 miles away in Avoca, Minn., where she’s news director for several radio stations. 

“A friend of mine that works with me at the radio station likes to crochet,” Wettschreck said. “So, she crocheted these bands that have buttons on them.” The band wraps behind the wearer’s head and mask straps attach to the buttons instead of the ears, giving the skin a breather.

Wettschreck mailed the bands to Hendrickson so she could take one and give others to her coworkers. 

These crocheted bands, sent via the U.S. Postal Service, were a mother’s way of caring for her daughter when the coronavirus makes their usual three-hour drive to see each other a dangerous, discouraged trip.

“It was really frightening to me to know that my daughter who lives in a different county in a much busier area was in the thick of all this and has an underlying health condition” — kidney disease — “so knowing that she [is] dealing with patients and dealing with all these different people, it's hard to not get really scared for her,” Wettschreck said. 

For her part, Hendrickson isn’t worried like her mom is. It was stressful at Mayo once the pandemic began hitting Minnesota, she said, because of all the unknowns involving COVID-19. But she feels more comfortable now. 

“I feel safer now working than I did two or three weeks ago,” Hendrickson said. “I work where I go to the doctor.”

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Cody Nelson

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A woman working in breast imaging at Mayo Clinic faces new challenges — big and small — with coronavirus. Nearly 200 miles away, her mom has found a way to care for her daughter.

A woman in scrubs wears a face shield and mask. 

Raw ears, bad breath: A MN health worker's unexpected little trials amid COVID-19

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