Minnesota nurse comes out of retirement (again) to lend a hand to her hospital

The facility where Von Drasek worked, M Health Fairview St. John’s Hospital in Maplewood, needed to bolster its staff as the coronavirus pandemic consumed Minnesota. Budde asked Von Drasek if she’d rejoin the staff.

In previous weeks, Von Drasek felt an obligation to contribute as she watched news about the coronavirus. She agreed to return on the spot. So, Von Drasek, 68, left retirement to work in an occupational health capacity, ensuring the safety of medical workers at her hospital.

“I’d feel guilty if I didn’t do something,” Von Drasek said. “I can’t just sit at home on my hands.”

This wasn’t the first time Von Drasek retired.

In July 2019, Von Drasek held a retirement party and was planning to put together a recipe book and photo scrapbook. But Budde asked her that September if she’d return on a part-time basis to assist with a few projects. Von Drasek accepted.

With that work done in late December, Von Drasek retired again. She high-fived herself as she exited the hospital’s sliding doors, looking forward to enjoying the holidays with her family.

“I thought she was really done,” said Budde, the hospital’s system director of employee occupational health and safety.

The next month, Von Drasek took a retirement trip to Vietnam with her family. But she has always craved work — she didn’t like being a stay-at-home mom — and she struggled enjoying retirement. She dreamed of being a nurse since she was a child, envying one of her mom’s friends.

Her career included tenures at hospitals in Boston, New York and Minnesota. She started working for M Health Fairview in 2014.

“I don’t have hobbies,” Von Drasek said. “I love my mornings lazing around and then the afternoon would come and then I go, ‘Okay, what do I do now between 12 and 5 before I can have a cocktail?’ ”

When the coronavirus picked up steam in mid-March, the Maplewood hospital could no longer bring on volunteers due to health risks. They needed a larger staff to work all hours of the day, though.

Von Drasek was one of the first people Budde called. Not only was Von Drasek experienced, but she helped lighten the mood at work with jokes and was always easy to approach with questions or concerns. Before her retirement, Von Drasek was the hospital’s manager of employee occupational health and safety.

Von Drasek’s children, Lydia and Nicholas, worried about their mom, who has underlying medical conditions, picking up the coronavirus in the hospital. But Von Drasek felt more secure in the hospital, which has protocols for protective equipment, than she did in public. She renewed her nursing license just before it would have expired at the end of April.

In her full-time role, Von Drasek works with hospital employees to gauge if there is a risk for them picking up the coronavirus based on the patients they work with. She follows up with them daily and provides recommendations to employees potentially exposed to the virus. She also arranges protective gear to fit employees.

Von Drasek’s mornings have changed since March. Now, she arrives at the hospital at about 7 and works into the evenings. She plans to stay on staff until the spread of the virus slows, likely in 2021, when she’d have 46 years of experience as a nurse. The number of coronavirus cases in Minnesota dipped in early summer but are on the rise again.

Von Drasek wants to travel more and visit family in Texas and Massachusetts, and she never got around to putting together a recipe log or scrapbook. When she retires a third time, she insists she’ll decline Budde’s calls.

“I figure I deserve retirement,” Von Drasek said. “I just have to figure out how to deal with it.”