“She tried to do her job, and it killed her”: So said Dr. Philip Breen of his daughter, Dr. Lorna Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital — who died by suicide Sunday in Charlottesville, Va., where she was staying with family.
Her work amid the coronavirus pandemic took such a toll. “She was truly in the trenches of the front line,” he told The New York Times. “Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who died.”
Not only did Lorna Breen care for patients affected by COVID-19; she was infected herself — then tried to go back to work after recuperating for a week and a half. Her hospital sent her home again, and her family brought her to Charlottesville.
Breen isn’t the only frontliner to take her own life after witnessing the horrors of the coronavirus firsthand: A rookie Bronx EMT, John Mondello, killed himself Friday after less than three months on the job, police sources told The Post.