BITTER
The post I was planning on using can fortunately wait, because today I came across a powerful COVID-19 Essay in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) just published today about the devastating impact on frontline people caring for patients that Trump’s incompetence and malignant mismanagement has had.
I’ll admit that given my background, it probably hit me harder than most. But it will have an impact on anyone who cares about other human beings.
It was written by Dr. Anna DeForest, who is a resident in the Neurology Dept. at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Dr. DeForest also happens to have an MFA degree in writing – and this compelling essay showcases her talents.
She writes about her experience being called from a normal neurology residency to help battle COVID-19. With that in mind, and to be safe, I’ll add a potential TRIGGER WARNING.
I’ll provide the opening and closing paragraphs to help you judge:
Before I become your doctor, you have been intubated for weeks. I am a point in time, unattached to the greater narrative. I call your husband each afternoon, tell him you are stable. He asks about the medicine that props up your blood pressure. He calls it the levo, acquainted by now with the slang of intensive care. It’s true, we have pressors to assist your failing heart, a ventilator to breathe for you, venovenous hemofiltration to do the work of your kidneys. “Your wife is very sick,” I say, “but stably sick.” None of this is anything new.
…
What else is there to say? You are dead, like so many others, and the rest of us are left to live in the absence of any certainty. We can’t go on, and we go on: back to work, back to rounds, back to the next case coming crashing in. It is no use to think about the future, our training, or what happens next. We are all attending now to a historic and global suffering, and learning the limit of the grief our hearts can bear.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2016293
It’s a very short (only 12 paragraphs), but powerful piece. Feel free to save it for later if now is not a good time for you to read it.
SWEET
Staying with a medical theme, we’ve all been keeping an eye out for updates on a potential Coronavirus vaccine and additional medications that might help treat patients. Lost in this flurry of focusing on COVID, you might have missed the release of a new drug that’s a true miracle worker: Phucomol™
11 Responses to “It’s A Bittersweet Friday”
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I don’t see how anyone could read that and not be moved. Thank you for it.We need to know these things. I’m afraid I don’t see things getting any better.
The new drug reminds me of one we heard about when I was in high school. If I recall, it was called fukitol. It wasn’t very effective, though. This one sounds like quite an improvement.
Sometimes I wish I could get my hands on some phucomol and I wish all those healthcare workers on the frontline would get it distributed with their PPE.
Because they could do with a lot of phucomol, the healthcare workers working impossible hours in impossible shifts because of staff shortages; the healthcare workers that have to deal with the incredible mental strain of their jobs in times of a badly managed pandemic; the healthcare workers that feel they have to do a job despite the terrible anxiety of being infected with the virus themselves, and possibly die, and of spreading it among family and friends; the healthcare workers that invest their health and sanity in strangers without regard for their own future…
And then I’m glad there’s no phucomol because then those healthcare workers might stop being tireless, wonderful heroes and start thinking about themselves.
Thank you for the bittersweet, Nameless.
Amen!
The New Stability: Heartbreaking, very moving, and choked me up.
We’ve come a long way with medicines, and I believe that Phucomol is encouraging, and shows a positive
response to those who take it.
Thank you, Nameless for posting.
“The New Stability” is a must-read for everybody, especially the anti-mask wack jobs. Those who kvetch about having to wear masks should know what they may be causing.
Thanks Nameless, I will share your article with some elsewhere, including hospital-based health professionals working in the ICU in the Bay Area. Knowing they are not alone continues to be a periodic need.
Bitter: She does write well, and it’s probably a therapy for her to do it. Like it is for me, and us?, to write here, and elsewhere, seeking some form of catharsis. Then Trump, or one of his henchmen/women (Fist in DeVos’ face, hard!) does, or says, another imbecility!
Then, I think of the suicides I’ve heard of, among the medical heroes! (Fist in Trump’s face,VERY HARD, then…uh, oh, I may have to go to confession If this train of thought continues!
That is a huge amount of pain to have to contend with, on one’s “daily round! ”
Sweet: Where do I get some of that shit?
I visit another web-site, daily, and find people amazed that they can hate (Trump) so intensely! Some of the time, I can do a small dose of Phucumal, and lean back on my understanding of his disease, and say, this is what we can expect from a bastard with no bottom, and can get a brief reprieve from the rage inside. Then, I think of the millions of fools who thought he was the new coming of a savior, and those many who still do. I’ve got some neighbors, and relatives like that. Holy Phucumal!!
I’m going to go breathe, quietly, somewhere, now.
in a word, WOW!
half way through the NEJM article and I’m in tears…..
We WILL get through this, friends. Daily, I remind myself of all the terrible times this nation has lived through…be they wars, depressions, ”reconstruction”, more wars, etc. And we made it. And we’ll make it again. It’s just damned difficult! Having one another is SO helpful….thanks to all of you!
As a retired nurse, I thank you for sharing this article with us. I have tried to explain to friends the importance of what Gov. Cuomo is doing in NY and some just think he is acting like a dictator. All he is doing is trying to save more lives. We are doing well here now and I just hope and pray that we continue on the way we are going.
I’m sharing this on Facebook in hopes that some idiots out there will read it and be convinced to wear a mask and practice social distancing.
Thank you once again and stay safe everyone!