Care in the Time of COVID19

It’s been a week. In fact, it’s been a month. Several of them in fact. I don’t remember when I last had a normal day- traffic on my way to work, gowning/masking for ONLY isolation rooms, and then going to the gym or out with friends in the evenings/weekends.

Both my personal and professional goals seem frozen in time. Our department has dozens of policies that need review and then passed through multiple committees that aren’t meeting. In personal news, my home search has also been affected by this event. In short, I feel like a high school senior again….just wanting to leave for college.

The only difference between that time and now was that I had an idea of what was ahead. When you go to college, you expect classes, dorm life, lousy cafeteria food, and studying. After this crisis is over, I don’t know what to expect. Maybe it’ll never truly be over. I can only envision a society where you’re always standing 6 feet away, always wearing a mask outside of your home, and always wiping down every surface with bleach.

A Practitioner’s Dilemma

One of the stabilizing forces during this time has been my work. It’s not easy to work in a field where we have people dying every day. With COVID19, we’re seeing how the increased mortality rate of our inpatients affects doctors, nurses, and all of us. The patience that we often had is replaced by a quiet weariness. In some, it’s not so quiet. But, we’re all tired.

I personally, feel like this has been the laziest time in my life. I go to work and try to make myself do something active every day after work. But, then I go home and watch TV or a movie. I’ve gotten through an embarrassing number of shows on my Netflix list. Usually,

quiet nights in are what I live to do. They seem less restful now.

Perhaps part of this is feeling helpless. I lead my department and we have weekly meetings on management of patients with the disease. We’ve taken steps to ensure that we have adequate tube feeding supplies. We’ve developed emergency guidelines for the protein and calorie provision in these critically ill patients. But, so many of them still don’t recover. We have two wreaths in our critical care unit and one has a ribbon for everyone who dies while the other has a ribbon for everyone who lives. It’s about 50/50.

Being a Dietitian

One of the impacts of this virus is understanding that we have significant limitations in our practice. Sure, I’m giving the high protein, fish oil-formula and everything else I know what to do but I couldn’t tell you if it makes a difference or not.

….And that’s my happy thought of the day. Hopefully, we have better days ahead.