When you don’t know if you’re going to catch it because there just isn’t enough equipment, you start recording videos of yourself in the car on the way home so that your daughter will have some memory of you if you don’t make it, when you see your coworkers crying in the parking lot at the end of the day, noticing that a lot of people are carrying rosaries for the first time, when the attendings let it slip that they’re drinking more than usual at home to calm down. The hospital feels like it’s on fire, you know it’s on fire, you can see it’s on fire, but you still feel cold.
You can’t convey that to people. You can’t make them understand that.
I’ve worked in the inner city for almost my entire training, I’ve seen ridiculous shit, but I NEVER thought that at an American hospital, the infrastructure would be so pushed beyond our limit.
When I hear people bitch about how “hospitals used COVID to excuse poor quality care and protect negligent doctors” it makes my blood boil. How many times did they have to push patients on bipap with BP 70/30 into an elevator because that’s as stable as you could get them before moving to a higher level floor? Did they ever do a residency in pediatrics then have to titrate levophed and start dialysis on a 70 year old? Did they have to admit a 26 year old, look them in they eyes and say “this will help, you’re gonna be okay” before intubating and feeling this person was going to die... finding out 2 weeks later you were right?
Call me callous, angry, traumatized, but I hope some of these people encounter the hell that is COVID so they can eat their words from their precious, healthy populations that walk around mask free thinking they’re smarter than the herd.
Ask Herman Caine’s family what they think about masks. Survive stage 4 cancer but die because you can’t be bothered to wear a mask.