In the spaces between seeing patients, calling families, and writing notes come thoughts. Psychologists would call them “invasive”, and yes I know that left unexamined, these things can be dangerous. Luckily, we have our social worker who regularly (and insightfully) does an informal debrief on us.

She probably thinks we don’t notice but we do and we’re thankful.

When did it really start?

When we come into work in the mornings, we are temperature checked and then need to swipe our ID cards into a card reader. What this does, is to document that we’ve been checked and presumably that we are aware of the danger of going to work.

When we were talking about when it really started, an image from this morning came to mind. The card reader is right outside of the Gift Shop. When you look into the gift shop , it’s still full of St. Patrick’s Day cards, green hats, St. Patty Cards, and the very beginning of Easter Chocolate Bunnies.

The gift shop was closed in early March, when all the volunteers were sent home and now sits like a clock frozen at the time of a disaster, it’s cheerful Trinkets heralding holidays that were just days of anxiety and fear in the hospital in which it lives.

The days after that came almost unnoticed, the hours of terror turning us all into zombies, lumbering on under increasingly heavy loads until after two weeks it became normal.

Like Monuments To The Lost

This morning on rounds my team and I had to walk by the security holding closet. This is the closet that hospital security uses to keep an admitted patient’s belongings until they are being discharged or until family comes to retrieve them.

Now normally this isn’t even an after-thought and I’d be hard pressed to even tell you were it is.

I know where it is now.

Security was emptying the closet of unclaimed bags of personal effects and getting them ready for long-term storage. Hundreds of bags all stacked neatly along the hallway; generic hospital issue clear bags, shopping bags, backpacks with decorative patches, and large inter office envelopes all being labeled with the names of those lost to Covid, awaiting some future relative who would claim them.

As we walked away from that sight, it reminded me of headstones, marking the life of someone who came to us and never left, their lives remembered in a small pile of clothing and shoes.

Images that stoke a memory.

Hope?

Recently, there have been reports of the possible effectiveness of a drug by the name of dexamethasone in treating Covid-19.

Dexamethasone is a steroid and what steroids do is suppress the immune response. If you recall, the danger of Covid is the way it stimulates the immune response into destroying the body’s lungs and kidneys. A drug (like Remdisivir and dexamethasone ) that decreases the immune response should help this phase of the disease.

The preliminary reports show that when given at the right time, it improves short term survival by five percent. There is no data about quality of life or long term survival.

So it’s a good thing. Better would be that you wear a mask and don’t get sick in the first place.

Wash your hands

Don’t touch your face

Social distance

Wear a mask

Eat right

Sleep

Exercise

… and love one another.