Doctors and nurses were forced to ration their care, theyrevealed.
This could happen to us too.
I dont want anything happening to you.
Image courtesy of Phillip Picardi; Design by Morgan Johnson
He thought of me firstbefore what could ostensibly happen to him.
Darien has always been the kind of doctor who cares immensely for his patients.
(He lived!)
(He cried when he handed the mother her new sonto this day, childbirth makes him emotional.)
Of course, some days are harder than othersand some were almost too difficult to bear.
His eyes wide, he looked up at Darien and asked the inevitable.
Am I going to be okay?
My partner looked down into his eyes, and forced himself to smile reassuringly.
Yes, youre going to make it.
COVID-19 patients will simply overwhelm our health care system.
In other words, this country was and is woefully unprepared for this pandemic.
In a survey of one Wuhan hospital,29% of caseswere attributed to health care providers.
Life or death may be the job, but that doesnt mean thecopingever gets any easier.
Ive been told by my fiance that this is just another part of the job.
They are more immediately worried about the very sick people who cannot access testing or adequate treatment.
Of course, this also puts the people closest to these doctors at risk.
We didnt fully process that, by proxy, youre on the front lines too, she said.
We resolved to FaceTime each other instead.
As the hospital beds filled up, more and more of the ventilators became occupied.
For the duration of the pandemic, he was going to sleep in the guest bedroom, without me.
This was social distancing, except somehow way worse than I had imagined.
There is a certain inevitability to new coronavirus in our household.
But theres a sense right now that whats in store will be so much worse.
I cannot imagine, for example, my sweet partner being forced to decide who gets to live.
I cannot fathom the look on his face the next morning when he tells me about his decision.
The only thing we can rely on, in the face of so much uncertainty, is love.
