Friends,
All the employees are funneled though a single entrance in the back. The bricks and hallways along the way have been covered with messages of support, thanks and optimism. "Stay strong! Keep fighting! It's us against Corona! You got this!" On day one they seemed quaint or inadequate, perhaps even a tiny bit gauche. But now I look forward to the little messages of hope as we come through each morning, a gauntlet of affirmation. We need all the support we can get. It helps. It helps more everyday. I love that they constantly add to it, as more thoughts of love and support arrive.
We lost five people today, almost a third of our service. Sometimes, you can see the crash coming a mile away. The third death, Mr. H, had required increasingly large amounts of medications to keep his blood pressure up over the last 48 hours. His skin was mottled and gray. Even with the settings on his ventilator all the way up, he wasn't getting nearly enough oxygen. I didn't know him as a person, just a name followed by a dizzying array of numbers, xrays and trends. Yet, when he finally crashed, I felt so sad. Completely gutted and weak. It's profoundly demoralizing to be so impotent. To come up blank, again and again.
Covid. I want to hate it, to blame it and to curse it. But's it's inanimate and unfeeling, A random, self-replicating packet of genetic material that is constitutively without intent or design. There is no malice to fault, no scheme to denounce. We have only its' devastation to behold. I made the silly mistake of crying today. It came right after our third code in less than three hours. I can't do that again. It just fills your N95 respirator with itchy, wet snot with no good way to clean it out without breaking down your PPE. That's dangerous and resource consuming - so I lived with it. Like so many things in an ICU, it's gross...but what can you do?
I'm proud of my team. Proud of their steadfastness and willingness to jump in. Codes, always a somber affair, have a new, added dash of terror. When patients lose their pulse, we go through the usual procedures-- which always start with chest compressions. It's a last-ditch effort to reverse things but it has become very risky for the personal involved-- you have to physically touch the patient and pump hard on their chest, 100 times a minute. These efforts indubitably aerosolize large amounts of virus widely and in concentrated form -- aimed straight at those doing the compressions. Yet, they keep jumping in to do it. Over and over again.
The doom will pass. There are signs things are looking better in terms of ER visits and hospitalizations. Headlines say were are at a peak here in NY. Surely, for each patient here there are hundreds, if not thousands, that have been infected and are recovering nicely. As terrible as this it, it is manageable. We never ran out of ventilators. The doctors and staff so far have (largely) avoided major illness. Everyone, inside and outside of the hospital, is collectively doing so much to slow this down.
And on schedule, the world is erupting with fragrant blooms and tender spring life. Bright-eyed babies are being being born, somewhere, every moment when we loose a patient. We will inevitably renew as we have always done- relying on persistence, thoughtfulness and love.
Along the entrance gauntlet of encouragement, someone has posted the famous Mr. Rogers quote, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” I'm going to leave things with Fred and his quote for a while. I don't like writing every night anymore. It's too hard. I need to think about other things when I'm home. Tomorrow on my drive, I'm not going to think about what to say in an email and instead focus on cataloging the Latin names of all the plants I spot in bloom. Then I'll focus my brief evening on learning about those I couldn't name. Maybe down the road I'll send an update or two. Until then stay strong, enjoy spring.
I love you,
Jordan
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