I broke down and cried at work today...
Hi. Hello. It’s me, making a sudden appearance and writing a long post because sometimes things like this feel very cathartic and in unsettling, uncontrollable times like these, talking into the great big unknown is very therapeutic, even if no one really reads this.
But anyways. Yes, I broke down and cried at work today. For context, I’m a healthcare provider (I’m an oncologist. I work with cancer patients) and I work in a hospital and I’m also immunocompromised. I’ve seen sick patients and I’ve seen heart-breaking cancer cases, but never have I cried like I did today. I’m one of the people who aren’t able to work from home during COVID-19 and still commute in every day on the MBTA (thankfully my husband is able to drive me in most days since all of his court cases have been postponed).
I honestly can’t even tell you why I started crying. I was sitting alone in an empty office (we’ve implemented the 6-feet social distancing in the hospital so I’m now alone in someone’s office who’s able to WFH) and suddenly just had this overwhelming sadness. I think it was a culmination of seeing how eerily empty and apocalyptic the city of Boston is and having the realization of how scary things are getting and how genuinely fearful my colleagues in medicine are (my colleagues--who every other day of the year know exactly what to do and always seem to have the answers and are at the top of their fields and are just all-over amazing and accomplished--and even THEY are afraid of the unknown).
I’m not an infectious disease doctor. I’m lucky I don’t have to work on the frontlines like so many of these brave people are, but it’s still terrifying. And how is it affecting us in the healthcare fields beyond those who work in the ICU/ID? We have cancer patients who we are unable to see in clinic now because of the risk of COVID-19. We have patients we’re making the tough decision to defer visits with and cancel follow-up appointments to assess toxicity because the risk of coming to the hospital is far too great. We have elderly patients we’ve resorted to conducting telehealth visits with who don’t understand technology and therefore are unable to get the full benefit and are missing crucial information. We have important multidisciplinary meetings we’ve had to cancel or move to online formats, which complicates patient care. We have colleagues who are now furloughed for 2 weeks because they were accidentally exposed, leaving gaps in the system where people are having to take on extra work to make up for those unable to come in. We have very limited PPE and we’ve resorted to reusing one mask for an entire day, which goes against everything ever recommended for safe infection control. And with the news updates changing daily (if not, hourly), we have so many people lost and unsure of what proper protocol is now.
Quite frankly, it’s scary.
I wasn’t scared a week ago. And then when I saw the trajectory of the United States COVID-19 cases, and how it’s affecting our ICUs, then I became afraid. Because of the ventilators. To put this into perspective, there are roughly 300 million people living in the US. Let’s say the virus affects 100 million of us. If everyone became exposed to the virus and say 99% have no major complications, that leaves us with only 1% who have severe complications, which doesn’t seem like a huge deal (it’s a tiny number, right?) Well 1% is still 1 million people and guess how many ventilators are in the US? 100,000. No doctor wants to have to make the call of who’s going to get a ventilator and who isn’t. Because I can tell you, the 90 year old grandma won’t get the ventilator. It’ll be the 50 year old.
So what does all this mean for you (if you’re even still reading?)
1. Please don’t use PPE unless you need it (ie you’re actively sick or elderly or immunocompromised). If you have PPE, please donate it to your local hospital. It pisses me off seeing all these instagram posts of celebrities doing cutesy *quarantine selfies* in their surgical masks and N95 respirators when they do NOT need it (I’M CALLING YOU OUT, NINA DOBREV)
2. Please continue to follow the social distancing recommendations provided by the CDC. And if you feel sick, please avoid everyone else, regardless of whether or not you think it may be COVID-19 related.
3. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be kind to everyone. Reach out to your friends. Keep being social. Do something nice for a neighbor who may be affected by not being able to work and is now losing income. Help an elderly person out. We need this kind of attitude during these unpredictable times.
4. And finally, don’t give up. It’s ok to be sad. It’s ok to cry. It’s fine to just turn off the news for once and walk away. But please stay positive and know that even in this fucked up situation, if there’s even a slight silver lining, it’s the fact that for once in maybe a very very very long time, every person in the world has something they can relate to with one another. We’re all going through this together, and we can all help each other.
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