Four Months

I think this is officially the longest I've gone without posting here.

March and April were surreal months.  The day that the WHO declared COVID a pandemic, I went to work like normal, rounded with my trainees, and went to yoga.  The following day, my city started going into lock down.  My clinics were shut down, and except in the most extreme of cases I could only do patient visits over the phone.  Schools and non-essential businesses closed.  My world shrunk down to my apartment, my cats, and my computer.

I wish I could say that I handled things better than I did.  I would like to tell you about the books I read, the fabulous sourdough I baked, and the superfit body I gained through turning my bedroom into a home gym.  But I can't.  What I can tell you about is cheese.  Because for a solid month and a half, my main activity was eating ridiculous amounts of cheese.

I had a lot of time off of work in April, because I was supposed to be in the UK at a conference and on vacation, and instead I spent most of that time on my couch eating.  Partly it was my way of resting after a really busy start to the year, but mostly it was my way of grappling with (or trying to avoid grappling with) the complete upheaval of everything I had previously considered to be stable.  I struggle with uncertainty at the best of times, and I really didn't know how to cope with *waves hands at everything*.  So I avoided, and I numbed as best as I could.

I almost started this next paragraph with "We were really lucky", but I won't, because what has happened in my province and in my country hasn't been a matter of luck:  it's been leadership.  Both federally and provincially, the government has acknowledged the seriousness of COVID and taken steps to protect its citizens.  And as a result, we've been really fortunate to mostly contain COVID.  Even though we're slowly reopening across the country, our numbers have fallen to just over 200 cases a day - for the whole country.

Four months after the start of lock down, life is starting to go somewhat back to normal.  I'm eating less cheese.  And things that were tenuous and uncertain are slowly settling, albeit not as much as they were pre-COVID.  I am so, so grateful to live in the country that I do.

For all of my American friends, I am so, so sorry.

Stay Home

I know that I am mortal.

Anyone who goes through medical training, if they pay any attention whatsoever, is forced to confront this fact.  For me, there is one particular moment from my residency training that brought this home to me.  A woman very close to my age had come into the hospital feeling unwell, and a series of CT scans had shown that she was dying.  The scan report described numbers and dimensions of multiple tumours, and at the end the Radiologist had left a horrifying impression statement:  "Riddled with cancer".  I was the one left to deliver the news to her, and as I read the scan report and thought about what I was going to say, her two children ran past the computer I was working on, laughing as they turned the hospital ward into an impromptu field for tag.

I know that I am mortal, and yet, I don't really KNOW that I am mortal.

A week ago, I was watching the New York Times Coronavirus map, as the outbreak spread closer and closer to the United Kingdom, worried that my conference in April would be cancelled.

Then I accepted that my conference would be cancelled, and worried that if I went to the UK for vacation, I would be quarantined on my return.

Then I worried about going to the States.

Then about going to the Rockies.

It was only about Thursday, as I watched the numbers go up and previously yellow countries turn to red on the map, that the seriousness of this started to hit me.

My first real worry was that I would be called on to provide inpatient care.  I've worked almost entirely outpatient care for the past seven years, and I've never worked inpatient care except under direct supervision, so the idea of managing a heart attack or having to put a breathing tube into someone in respiratory failure fills me with terror.  I will do my best to step up and do whatever I am called upon to do, but I certainly do not want to.

And then, in the last 24 hours, as I've had a quiet day of social distancing at home with the cats, I've had time to reflect on what this really means.  I'm just as vulnerable to this infection as anyone else.  Probably even more, given that I will still be going into the hospital and seeing patients, albeit in a very limited capacity for the foreseeable future.  And my friends.

Fuck.

One of my good friends is a paramedic.

The mother of my godson is an ER doc.

Another good friend is an anaesthesiologist.

Another friend a surgeon.

Many others family physicians.

Many, many others internist who have taught me and with whom I trained.

And fucking idiots are going to the bars for St. Patrick's Day.  Getting their nails done.  Taking advantage of discounted fares to go on holidays.  I understand the denial, because I was there a week ago.  But I am filled with fear at the thought that the people I love, my community, are vulnerable because other people don't want to have their freedom restricted in any way.

I keep saying the same thing over and over again:  Please, for the love of everything, stay home.