coronavirus – Page 2

A Question of Trust

Syed M. Ahmed July 7, 2020 10 Comments

Years ago, when I first joined the family-medicine faculty of the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), I spearheaded a project to build stronger connections with the surrounding communities, primarily made up of people of color and low-income individuals. Deepening our ties with these communities would, we hoped, give us more understanding of our patients’ health needs, and might help them to feel more receptive to our efforts.

I Would Like to Call It Beauty

Andi Shahu June 30, 2020 10 Comments

Gearing up for my night shift in the COVID-19 intensive-care unit, I don my personal protective equipment (PPE)–a white plastic air-purifying respirator (PAPR) hood. The hood connects via a tube to a large battery pack that I strap onto my waist over my scrubs. I turn on the battery and shiver when the rush of cool air blows past my ears. I walk into a bright white antechamber where a safety officer inspects me.

“You’re

In the Biodome

Sandy Zaeh June 3, 2020 4 Comments

As a pulmonary and critical-care medicine fellow, I care for patients with a broad variety of respiratory ailments. But little did I know, as I examined my patient Mr. Smith in the outpatient pulmonary clinic this past winter, that I’d see him again only months later as my first patient with COVID-19.

Mr. Smith was tough as nails. A stoic retired steelworker and former smoker, he suffered from significant emphysema, but was inclined–by nature and

Burned Out

David Janeway May 28, 2020 9 Comments

It’s been five months since I left my position as a psychiatrist and medical director, and like everyone, I’m wrestling with questions about how COVID-19 has changed our lives, maybe forever. As I read the news and hear from my former colleagues, who’ve had to quickly ramp up to deliver telepsychiatry, I feel a mixture of emotions: fear and concern for my former patients; guilt that I’ve left my colleagues behind to fight on without

Please Don’t Call Us Heroes

Judy Fleishman May 19, 2020 6 Comments

The people I work with don’t want to be called heroes.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am a psychologist and medical educator in a family-medicine residency that serves a diverse, multilingual immigrant population. I work with healthcare providers of all stripes–family-medicine residents and attending physicians, medical receptionists, medical assistants, case workers and clinic managers. My colleagues are profoundly dedicated, talented, hardworking, flexible, creative and compassionate. They absolutely want to do everything they can to help patients

Inside the Respiratory Tent

Joanne Wilkinson May 13, 2020 8 Comments

Spring comes slowly to New England. When I leave the house in the mornings at the end of April, I pull my fleece jacket tighter around me on my way to the car. My preteen daughter’s dark eyes and solemn mouth watch from the second-floor window as I pull away.

In the “don and doff” station at the respiratory tent in the hospital parking lot, I put on a gown and gloves, then take one

Doing Time

Jill Siebers May 6, 2020 17 Comments

COVID-19 Confinement, Day Four: My partner, James, sleeps. He coughs. He breathes. He smiled this morning when I brought in tea. He nodded when I asked if he wanted the curtains open so that he could look at the sea, then returned to sleep.

We’re quarantined in James’s new beach house on a skinny peninsula that’s only three blocks wide, bay-to-sea, off of New Jersey. I am a stranger here. When a cardiologist covering for

The Last Pandemic

Tony Dajer April 29, 2020 14 Comments

7:00 on a Sunday evening.

It is day 30+ of New York City’s COVID-19 pandemic. Fire trucks and flashing lights fill the street fronting the hospital emergency department where I’m a physician. The scene erupts into applause and sirens. We doctors, nurses, physician assistants, techs, housekeepers and clerks wave back and flash our individual cardboard letters spelling “Thank You!” It is so good to be outside and, for a few minutes, unafraid. Inside, our

An Ounce of Empathy

William Liakos April 22, 2020 14 Comments

I am a medical student in my third year of studies. For medical students, this is the point at which, after two years of book learning, we rotate through hospital clerkships that give us our first experience of delivering hands-on care to inpatients.

Earlier in the year (it feels like many lifetimes ago), I read that COVID-19 was “just the flu.” We heard from scientific sources and popular media that other maladies were much

A COVID State of Mind

Ibrahim Sablaban April 8, 2020 10 Comments

I’m a fourth-year psychiatry resident in the final months of training, and I have signed on to continue as an attending physician at my hospital.

In mid-March, my team was consulted on a patient in the ICU. She was one of the first identified COVID-19 cases in Michigan, and our hospital’s first such patient.

The patient was being treated with psychotropic medications, and one of them was decreasing the effectiveness of an antiviral

Love in the Time of COVID-19

Sarah Stumbar April 1, 2020 11 Comments

COVID-19 changes everything–even, or especially, love. It demands that we love differently, and in new ways. For me, this is what #loveinthetimeofcovid19 looks like.

My husband, Lunan, and I are both doctors. Lunan, a urologist, is completing his final year of training in New York City, and I am a family-physician educator at a medical school in Miami.

We are living separately this year–one of the many sacrifices we’ve made in pursuing our medical training

Corona, Contagion, Confusion

Barbara Packer March 20, 2020 35 Comments

My husband Joel, age seventy-six, has tested positive for the virus–the new big C.

Joel developed a low-grade fever on March 1. We were in San Francisco, visiting our ten-month-old grandson and his parents. They’d all had bad colds, and our grandson was still coughing and producing large amounts of sticky nasal stuff, so I wasn’t surprised when Joel got sick. (I figured that I eventually would, too.)

We went to a local urgent-care clinic.

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