The Doctors and Nurses against COVID19
There is a deceptively simple act of realism that arrives unnoticed at our doors. It knocks softly and enters uninvited. The act is reality itself. Like the blossoms of the spring suddenly erupt on the scene and color the landscape, so does reality. Upfront, in your face and there!
It happened recently and it took a tiny little inhabitant of the microbe world to bring it to everyone’s notice. This little critter escaped into the wide world of human inhabitants and immediately took hold of their attention. All else was thrown to the wind. From waking to sleeping, all acts and thoughts were eclipsed by this newcomer. Chaos and confusion spread like the plague as people started to close doors and turn inwards. Lights out at sunset harkened a dark city when before a flood of lights stood like beacons against a darkening sky. Ah yes, life had changed, and suddenly. The black swan had arrived.
Through it all the once heralded villains, for creating monstrously expensive healthcare, for causing estimated 30,000 to 300,000 thousand of avoidable deaths a year, for exhibiting greed and at times fraud, for doing unnecessary surgeries, for writing too many prescriptions, for not following the guidelines, for not being knowledgeable and needing a biannual examination to maintain their intellect, for not spending time with their patients, for forcing patients to have long wait-times in their clinics, for not following the spurious mandates, for having an opinion, was suddenly at the forefront in this calamity.
Rushing to the scene where other angels feared to tread, they started to care for the sick, the infirmed, the vulnerable. Irrespective of what the expense was, they ran through the 24-hour-clock countless times, stopping to catch a breath supported only by the cold hard firmness of the hospital walls. They worked through exhaustion, through the stress and the longing for sleep, concerned only for their patients. From one crying for help to another dying of breath. From an elderly closing their eyes for the last time to the younger ones gasping for air with fear and concern dripping from their and their family’s eyes. These once villains continued their work as they had all their lives, saving lives whenever and wherever they could. Each victory soon lost in the shuffle and each loss firmly burdened on their souls forever. A black mark added to the catalog that would mar their dreams in the middle of the night for a long, long time.
The cries for help never cease. They arouse the conscience day and night as they have always done. The stress of a physician’s life is a long continuum of desperation at times and has led many into a state of severe depression in the past, only to be discarded by some lofty ivory tower individuals to recommend yoga, or spending more time with patients, or eat better or find a hobby as the therapy of choice for this stress. For they, who do not venture into the jaws of death, know not what it means to face it.
But this time, it is different. As it always is. The conscience of the world has been pricked a bit. Even the ivory tower is fearful to tread on its well-worn path of oblique advice. They themselves are hunkered down with bolted doors to let the “Plague” pass them by. A few stragglers in some rag newspaper still continue the demonizing and vilifying of the doctors, but mostly they see with gaping mouths and rounded eyes, the debacle that stretches in from of them for miles and miles and body-bags that mount daily. They see these doctors and nurses laying down their lives to save others. And reluctantly and somewhat begrudgingly and with hesitation, they have to admit that the frontline doctors and nurses against this disease are like the soldiers on the Normandy Beach; heroes.
Physicians' and nurses’ exposure to the virus is commonplace and inevitable, in spite of all the precautions. Knowingly, just like the soldiers that ran into the canons hidden in the fortified bunkers of Normandy Beach and saved the world from tyranny, these medical men and women strive for the same goal, to stave off death and allow healing. To liberate health and wellness from the scourge of this pandemic. They yearn like all of us for the same end; a quiet peace to reign after the virus is neutralized. They know only one thing, no matter the color of the skin, the position in society, the wealth, the religion, the creed or the gender, all are vulnerable, and all need the same protection.
When this is all over, and it will be sooner or later, remember the sacrifice of these souls, before you raise your pen and tarnish the paper with the ink, to destroy the only Noble profession that ever existed on the face of this earth.
Alas, we will forget, for our memories are short, until the next one…
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