Hey, it's Anna. A few months ago, we shared stories from essential workers with you, what they were seeing on the job, how they were feeling, what they were doing to cope, including from this listener, Sharon.

I am a CNA who works at a hospital in Virginia, and I'm on the front line to taking care of COVID-19 patients.

Sharon is 40 years old.

She lives in Northern Virginia, where she's a single mom.

Her daughter's 13.

She suffers from chronic asthma, and she told us then she was worried about going into work every day.

If I were to get the virus, there is not a good outlook for me.

So just getting things in order are the only thing that's keeping me sane is knowing that

if I'm not here, I've done everything possible to help the next person take care of my kid.

Since then, we've heard from a lot of you wondering how Sharon is doing.

We've been thinking about her too.

So I called her up last week to find out what's happened since she sent in that voice memo.

Oh, yeah, that voicemail. That was a rough one.

What happened after you sent that to us?

After I sent that, I realized that I needed to take a leave from work because

I understood that my mental was not right at that time. And so to go to the hospital where

you're feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and where you already leave and feeling drowned,

I couldn't, I couldn't take it much more. So I had to take a leave.

When did your leave start?

I'd say second week of April-ish, around there, yeah.

And what kind of leave was it?

What did you tell your boss?

...