Joline Lowe was working at Methodist Hospital-Stone Oak in San Antonio in March when its first COVID patient arrived. An RN for more than a decade, she hadn’t seen anything like it – how the patient deteriorated and how the entire body was affected.

Joline Lowe

“There’s a lot to learn, and a lot to teach the families about, too,” she says. “And because people can’t visit, we had to count on phone calls and Facetime and work with the patients in the isolation room to help them remember that their families are still with them and they’re not alone.”

The new Galen instructor, who teaches Med-Surg and Gerontology for the LVN program, also had to remind her colleagues that they were not alone, either.

She often spent time talking with other nurses through social media groups. It was in one of those groups that she saw a painting by Meagan “Meags” McGinty of a nurse in a medical mask, face shield, and scrubs that resonated with her. When Joline showed it to her mother-in-law, she responded simply: “I can do that for you.”

The 71-year-old Jeannie Hope Gibson created her own piece, drawing her daughter-in-law freehand in pastel on paper in her medical mask, holding the hand of a COVID patient.

The piece (pictured here) is called “The Gift of Love.” The inscription on the back reads, “To Joline with love and respect for being there during this troubled time. For all that you risked, for the comfort you provided, thank you. Mama J.”

Now, the artwork hangs in Joline’s home office in San Antonio, where she teaches Galen students and thinks often of all her former colleagues, still working every day to help people as only nurses can.