It’s now over a month into the New World and I realize that I’ve only been on the outside six days. I go into the hospital, do my thing, then come home.
The evenings are lost to me as I go through “stages” ( as my daughter has observed). I go from obsessively washing and disinfecting everything I come into contact with, to staring at dinner, to walking around the house looking out of the windows, and finally staring blankly at TV until I lay in bed and stare at my phone in the dark, trying to avoid doing research on Covid (and usually failing) until I pass out.
So it’s safe to say that I’ve only been on the “outside” for 6 days. Just enough time on the weekends to begin to forget what it’s like inside.
This makes reentry difficult.
On the first day back, muscles are tight beyond all as my body tenses in an involuntary cramp all day, the soreness as I relax interpreted to surely be Covid. Any cough from allergies are also Covid, as is the panic when you are too cold or too hot… Covid Covid Covid.
Finally, there’s the ritual of the twice a day temperature checks, the fear as you wait with the stupid thing in your mouth waiting for it to beep… and give you a reprieve for another twelve hours. Another chance to update the instructions in that pended email I have ready to send to my family in case I get sick, one more time.
I think… everyone inside ( on the frontlines or however you want to say it ) feels a similar existential fear.
As far as what it’s like inside :
– Everyone is tired. Maybe not the fatigue of staying up all night, but the dull blankness in the eyes that only lights up when gearing up to go into a room. The fog that only abates when trying to save that life.
– Everyone knows a horror story. A patient whose family won’t give a DNR on an obvious lost cause because three other family members have just died, of the daughter who now lies in the same bed with Covid as her mother who just died of it last night, or of the entire grandparent generation of a family who died on your unit this week.
– Everyone is getting fat. We’re all eating too much, drinking too much coffee, and ignoring ourselves. Maybe if this goes on for another month we’ll all flip to being health nuts, but health food stores don’t deliver to the hospital (for now anyway).
– We’re not crying. I can make that observation but can’t really dissect it, because I’m not crying either.
– In our hearts, we don’t think this will ever be over and for some of us, when it is… it will never be.
Life, Health, and Policy. 