CULTIVATING COMMUNITY THROUGH COVID

It’s been three years since COVID (SARS CoV2) changed our lives almost instantly and -- in a sense -- irrevocably. While this piece isn’t about me, I will use my journey through COVID as a barometer for how things have gone the last three years.

On Feb 14, 2020, I went on KVIA and talked about COVID for the first time. “My family and I still plan on going to the Olympics in Japan,” I said. Man, was I wrong!

I remember March 5th of 2020 being in Houston giving a talk on HIV and thinking “Well, this can’t be that bad. That was the last time I would get on a plane for almost months.”

One week later, we were hoarding toilet paper and afraid to see our loved ones.

2020 was a crazy chaotic year. Fear. Death. Uncertainty.

From wiping down groceries, to wearing masks, to being afraid to walk past people outside on the streets. All the while the world around us was shutting down and becoming a scarier place. We watched the news stories of the horrors in New York and yet it was quiet in El Paso; as of March 31, 2020 we had a total of 50 COVID cases.

By May, it became very clear to us that COVID was NOT going anywhere and we were going to have to change so many things. From the way we work, to the way we play, to the way we travel, to the way we educate.

Zoom, WebEx and Teams became not only rampant but dominant.

But for those of us in the healthcare space, these tools were not an option. The fear and dread mounted on a daily and weekly basis and more people arrived in the hospitals and unfortunately, many of them died.

As I went to Del Sol Medical Center everyday, my bubbly and stoic nature began to dim.

I realized as someone that had battled weight all his life that I needed to get healthier and began to exercise. And even that was difficult; somedays the will to even get out of bed was not there, and I would break down in uncontrollable tears working out.

What would happen if I died? Who would take care of my kids?

But all the while, our COVID numbers stayed low. The summer of 2020 in El Paso beamed with hope. People started going out. Road trips became a thing. It seemed that inconceivably we had dodged the proverbial viral bullet…and then July 2020 came.

To try and allay fears we (HCA) let cameras into our ER to show people the human and real face of COVID in the hospital.

As we would learn with COVID -- again and again -- what goes up, must come down. By the end of August 2020, we were seeing low levels of COVID spread, and life seemed to be returning. Businesses, bars, restaurants, families --all seeing eyes -- not necessarily faces because masks were still the theme of the day. But at least our lives on the Borderland seemed to be returning.

But then came Oct/Nov of 2020 with a crushing COVID wave. Fear returned. Everything went silent as we experienced the most brutal and deadliest wave of COVID we had experienced to date.

Tents in front of hospitals. Inmates acting as mortuary attendants. The El Paso Convention Center transformed into an overflow hospital.

That whole time period feels so surreal when I look back.

Long days. Long nights. Death. Fear. Uncertainty. But at the same time, hope.

Vaccines were coming. But so were elections -- and the politicization of COVID. But as the song says “even in the darkest days, it’ll be all over…in the morning.”

The hope was vaccines. Oddly, the biggest personal irony of COVID for me was the day before I was to get vaccinated, I got COVID!

The headlines were wild. And even though I didn’t know how I got COVID, I felt ashamed and as if I had failed myself and my community.

But the vaccines were here!

Whether it was given to those at the front of the line, or those that jumped the line! The important thing was our community was creating protection, both through the toil and sacrifice of the lives lost, or through the public health miracle of vaccines.

Then, (finally) for most parents, the relief of having kids return to school.

Eventually, books and thesis will be written on how we harmed a generation of school kids by keeping them out of school as long as we did. Our community returned kids to school faster than most in the country and we should be proud of that.

The remarkable thing about 2021 is how surreal it felt.

People were traveling and kids were in school, but there was still a sense of dread and foreboding in the back. Is it gone, where is it going, when can we return to normal. How many shots will we need?

But by the summer of 2021, it really did feel as if El Paso was waking up.

COVID changed us and the world around us irrevocably. Businesses that didn’t serve food and alcohol remained on Zoom/WebEx. People were traveling, but with 2-3 masks per person and with complex COVID testing and retesting measures. I flew to London and Curacao in 2021 and the masked landscape while people removed masks to sleep and eat always struck me as comical anxiety laden theater; but that’s where we were.

By the end of the year, Omicron struck!

Hospitals were full again. People were scared again. But ahhh haaa…this was a different COVID. Almost everyone got it, but many people had already been vaccinated or been sick previously, and so the magic of immunity spared a repeat of the horrors of 2020.

We weathered the Omicron storm into Spring of 2022.

By this time, I must say, COVID became a tribe issue. There were those who no longer acted as if COVID existed and those who were in full or partial 2020 mode. In all honesty, there is and was no right or wrong. We are at a point where each individual will act as they feel comfortable.

The world, on average, has moved on. Academics, scholars and clinicians will argue about whether one, two, or 20 shots are the key to being safe. Each vaccination series garners less and less uptake as people grow weary.

But, again, life has been scarred.

People are still wary of in-person meetings, while restaurants, hotels and bars are open and booming. Kids who suffered the most loss of growth in COVID are learning how to engage again, talk again, learn again. In the wake of COVID remains an anxiety and depression explosion the likes of which this generation has never seen.

The last vestiges of COVID rules have melted away: all hospitals in El Paso have finally removed their mask mandates.

Life feels (almost) normal.

At some point, the post mortem of how COVID affected our community will be done. The lives lost. The conflict created and endured. But just as importantly is the sense of community: the sense of shared togetherness.

Organizations across the city that had never worked together sitting down (on Zoom and Teams) to plan and improve the lives of our city. That is what I want to remember these days -- the fellowship our community shared.

COVID was a journey I’ll never forget. From a hospital administrator, to an unemployed physician on an island, to returning to my community to provide patient care. Then along the way, lots of TV.

Three years ago the world and our community came to a halt. It was a scary, intense and never ending roller coaster.

Hopefully we have learned both as a group and individually, something from it that we can take into the future.

MEGAN MEHL |

here’s nothing worse than being single and hearing the punchline “…and that’s why they’re still single!” It’s not easy to offend me, but this one gets to me every time. In our society, is being unpartnered an indication that something is wrong with you?

It can certainly feel like that at times. It’s unsettling when you look up one day and realize that you’re the last person standing at the end of a game of musical chairs. Whether you’ve never been married, or you’re finding yourself back on the singles market after a breakup or divorce, dating definitely becomes a little more complex as we age.

Ilike to think that in many ways, I may have dodged a bullet by not having gotten married in my 20s. Not because of anyone else, but because of me. It hasn’t always been fun being single, trust me. But I know I’ve needed this time to discover who I am, what I want in life, and how to work through my own issues. Ultimately, I just wasn’t ready for marriage in my 20s. I had no idea who I was and put all my energy into what I thought I was “supposed” to do. My romantic relationships were codependent and I was always compromising what I wanted in the desperate pursuit of love from people who were ill-equipped to provide it.

As we get older, we naturally become better communicators. We develop our interpersonal skills and learn conflict

So great, we are better daters now. But as you age up into that next bracket on your doctor’s intake forms, there are presumably fewer people your age who aren’t taken!

After living in NYC, coming home has been a culture shock in many ways, not the least of which was the married-to-single ratio. In New York, all of my friends were single into their 30s and 40s, and we all navigated the dating world with support from one another.