TAILPIECE

AN AFTERTHOUGHT ON INCONVENIENCES

By Deepak G. Krishnan

THE SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS of a pandemic fatigue are here. Just about everyone has had enough with these masks, the social (physical) distancing, the lock downs and never-ending teleconferences. Regardless of the corner of the world we live in, a virus previously unexposed to the human race has touched us and taken its toll. In some of the worst-hit nations, the official count is reaching exponential tolls of infecting up to 200,000 fellow humans. Perhaps by the time this column sees light, at least some of us would have been vaccinated. We do not yet know what problems will arise next from this “solution”.

At work and on social media, friends and colleagues are constantly complaining of the inconveniences the pandemic has caused them. Cancelled weddings, birthday parties, graduations, elective surgeries, basketball games, and international conferences have been the center of discussions among disappointments. For many of us, the pandemic seems to be happening on TV to someone somewhere else in the world – in a slum in Mumbai or an ER in New York, not in my neighborhood! For a handful of us who either caught the disease or watched someone we knew die from it, the perspective is different. Several members of my team contracted the illness, and some had significant symptoms. Fortunately, we have not lost any members of our team, but I know of colleagues elsewhere in the world who have succumbed to the fatal effects of the virus.

Early this summer, I was brushing up on principles of critical care including ventilator management in anticipation for being deployed to our ICU if there was a surge in my small Midwestern city. Fortunately for everyone, that did not happen. However, it could still happen any day. One can only hope that the PPEs and the antivirals hold up their part of the promise. Every member of the medical team in our tertiary care academic medical center serving a large Midwestern population in the US is working long hours, odd shifts and adapting to the new ways of life. Sacrifices have become an anthem of life – pay cuts, high risk patient care, staying away from the family for fear of infecting them, just to list a few.

The medical community all over the world have come together like never before at a time when we need them the most. Our sacrifices and inconveniences do not require a validation. An oath of the ancient Greeks, which the youngest amongst us take when being set out into the world, shall be maintained, “this responsibility must be faced with great humility and awareness of my own frailty.”

A pandemic is ploughing through humanity and is incurring some major inconveniences to everyday life. And yet, we show up at our respective patient care units and do our best under the circumstances. So, the next time a family member or friend starts complaining of the minor inconveniences, don’t hold back – pinch your mask at the nose, find a soapbox to stand on and be a spokesperson for each nurse, respiratory therapist, housekeeper and internist fighting on the front lines – be a hero! ■