Loyola Medicine frontline couple works to keep family together amid COVID-19 crisis

MAYWOOD, Ill. (WLS) -- A couple working on the front lines of the fight against coronavirus shared a personal look inside their lives amid the global pandemic.

Sean and Beth Greenhalgh are choosing to stay together with their three kids in the safest way possible.

"It's been stressful, I think would be the easiest way to say it. You know, we've had to adapt a lot," said Interim Division Director of Hospital Medicine at Loyola Medicine, Sean Greenhalgh.

Both he and his wife Beth Greenhalgh, Manager of Clinical Pharmacy Services at Loyola Medicine, met in college. They married as each went through medical and pharmacy school respectively.

Now as a doctor working with COVID patients and a pharmacist at Loyola Medicine during a global pandemic, this family of five (plus their pup) is doing everything it can to stick together.

"The idea that I or Beth could go without seeing our three children for a week at a time is like asking someone to not breathe," Sean said. "It's not going to happen."

Beth said she knows it sounds cliche, but this is a situation where they have to take things a day at a time,

"If you just approach it from just get through today, get through tomorrow, that's kind of what we've told the kids," she said.

Sean works daily with patients on the COVID floor and has an important routine to keep the family safe.

He starts with one set of "traveling scrubs" in the morning. Once he gets to work, he changes into a separate set of "coronavirus scrubs" and his n95 mask.

Most important is the routine when he gets home, as described by his 9-year-old son, Evan.

"He will give my mom his keys, his wallet, and his phone for her to wipe them down," he explained. "Then I bring him down a towel so he can get out of his clothes to go upstairs and take a shower."

The Greenhalghs still worry.

"It's definitely stressful," Beth said.

But the couple said they know they can get through this as a family.

"It's not fun. I don't want to do it again, but you know, I know I can make it as long as she's here," Sean said.