COVID: Exhaustion
Three of my patients were crashing at the same time. One of those patients had just transferred to the floor. I couldn’t tell you her name. The Rapid Response Team was called. I was on the phone with my attending doctor mapping out treatment options. During the call, I felt a surge of emotion; a mix of doubt, of fear, of feeling overwhelmed. It raced through my veins and up to my brain. I wanted to throw the phone down and run away. Run from the stress. Run from the responsibility. It lasted for no more than 15 seconds, but it surprised me with its intensity and abruptness. Something within me overpowered the emotion, suppressed it. I listened to my attending and worked with my team to stabilize the patient.
That morning started with a different encounter. One of my patients had entered the slow spiral of death. Stable, but showing signs of decompensation. Family friends of his worked on different floors of the hospital. They would sneak down to see him. Unfortunately this breaks a number of regulations. A family member snuck into his room at the start of my shift. It was on me to see her removed. We spoke. She quickly exited. I turned to the patient. “I’m sorry,” I said. Given the pandemic, we’re encouraged to avoid unnecessary contact. I couldn’t help myself and reached out for his hand. “I’m sorry.”
The nurse asked about it as I left the room. “Well, she’s gone,” is all I could muster before being overcome with emotion. I had just denied the dying man a sense of comfort. Instead, he lay in his room, alone, dying. Somehow, I was the one who had done right.
This past week was tough. Tough patients. Tough hours. There has been a shift in the types of COVID patients we’re now seeing. Previously, we were seeing patients with a chief complaint of COVID. Now we’re seeing heart failure patients, cancer patients, patients with complex histories that also just happen to have COVID.
This past week, I pushed myself farther than I thought I could go. Mentally. Emotionally. All on ~5 hours of sleep per night. Doubt can creep into my morning commute. “Do you really have what it takes?” Dread. Exhaustion.
I continue to push forward. There are hard days. There will always be hard days. But we have to keep pushing forward. Sometimes it’s all that we can do.