May 30, 2020: Back on the wards as a fourth year, rotating with the Infectious Disease team for the month. What a sobering, strange, scary, infuriating, and beautiful spring it’s been. I’m grateful to be at UMass Med, for amazing role models near and far, and for the health of my family and friends. COVID-19 has reminded us all of our inherent interconnectedness and sifted to the surface the structural injustices and predisposition to disease and dis-ease built into our current socioeconomic and ecological structures and ways of being. I pray and hope we can make daily choices that build upon and create systems that support the health of our planet and its rich beauty and biodiversity. I pray and hope this time can serve as a wake up call, a real wake up call, so that we may better accompany and support each other along the road. “We’re all just walking each other home.” Can’t wait to vote in November...
June 4, 2020: It’s so strange to be back in the hospital after several months of hunkering down and finding a new rhythm at home. I remember back during my surgery rotation in February, we talked over the operating table about how coronavirus was hitting China hard and how we knew it was heading here: a waiting game. I didn’t think about how many masks I went through in a day moving in and out of the surgical unit.
My last week in the hospital in early March, I was in a weeklong elective with Maternal Fetal Medicine, working with a team supporting high risk pregnancies, high risk entries into this world. An ultrasound tech had already started wearing a mask because she had kids sick with a cough at home and she asked what the clinic planned on doing. The other techs whispered to me, she’s so dramatic, don’t get her started.
It’s so strange to be back in the hospital after experiencing this little virus take a hit on me and my dad. Why did we get sick and no one else in my family? My dad spent 12 days in the hospital with COVID, mostly on a neuro floor. “His presentation seems atypical” is what his team told us at the end of the first week, the first time I really felt scared.
I’m grateful for family and friends. So many people have been checking in and offering support, suggestions, and asking for updates. So many people are sharing insights and awakenings, struggles, challenges, calls to action in these past couple months and days.
July 7, 2020: Being present for my dad’s COVID illness and watching his recovery has been a profound experience. Whenever I talk to my dad about the vocation of medicine, he always emphasizes accompaniment. That’s what it’s all about for him. He’s been working as an internist at Boston Health Care for the Homeless for 25 years. He has heard all kinds of stories and circumstances and offered support and witness along the way. I’ve come to a much clearer understanding of the value of relationship and empathy in the healing process these past few weeks. My dad’s PCP is phenomenal: celebrating the small strides my dad has made and his hard work in recovery, reminding him of how far he’s come, talking to him like he’s a partner in his care plan. My dad so badly wants to get back to work and get back to being who he is, but his doctor has a beautiful way of putting things in perspective and encouraging my dad to slow down as he continues to recover. I’m recent days, my dad seems to be coming to an acceptance of what happened to him, of the fragility, of the unknown in that experience.