Snapshots: Corona

Remember this feature, Snapshots? 
I don't, not well, but somehow remember that it was a feature of this blog. 

So here goes. This will be quick. Just two stories, never happened, entirely made up.  

(1) A New Meaning to Vulnerability

After seeing a few patients face to face in the office last Monday, I knew it had to end. It's just a bad idea. It was fortuitous, too, getting an email that afternoon from the academic institution that keeps me on as an associate research professor. The email tells me that Blue Cross Blue Shield is now paying for phone and video-chat visits. Bill and use the usual codes. Don't abandon your patients in these difficult times! 

I forward it to a few colleagues. It's about time, we all grumble. Getting paid for virtual sessions had seemed an impossibility only a few weeks ago. It takes a plague.

So I send texts to patients: Call me. FaceTime me. Use WhatsApp, Zoom. I don't care. But don't come in.

They're fine with this, except for those who do not trust the airwaves.

Then I get an unexpected response.

"I'm sitting in my car sobbing. I just spoke to my doctor. Yes. Yes, call me on Wednesday."

JUST SAW THE DOCTOR AND HE'S SOBBING?

This is not a woman known for sobbing. Naturally I cannot wait and call her immediately but she doesn't pick up. I text and give her a time today. My four pm has cancelled. She texts back. "That works. Thank you."

This is a physically challenged person. On an average day she suffers, really suffers. It is hard to be her, and my personal feelings, like those I have for most established patients, are almost raw, so deeply caring whenever I think about what she's gone through. And she's young. To think that she might have coronavirus terrifies me. Could she beat that too?

We talk. She's fine. She wasn't, but now she is. She was upset because the doctor ordered her to be in quarantine, and she runs a huge  business, hundreds depend upon her to be there, to make decisions. And there will be the layoffs.

Not everyone, at that point, had to self-quarantine, and those of us who can work at home did that. But not everyone can just stay home.  She is freaked about the business, that it will tank.

And all I can think is: Dude, I've already been to your funeral. More than once. You will recover financially, Please G-d. Stay away from people. That's the only advice I have in the moment: self-isolate. Please. Just stay away from people. And breathe.

(1) Why Sometimes I Think I Married a Crazy Person

It is Shabbas, so we don't use the phone. But FD is a doctor and there is no Shabbas for him, he's exempt from Jewish laws. Saving lives is much more important, according to our rabbis.

We have finished eating a late lunch and are clearing the table. He's paged and walks away to make a call. He returns with his hat on his head.

"I have to take a little walk."

"Where are you going?"

"I have to see a patient."

"Why?"

"I have to tell him some news."

"Can't it wait until after Shabbas?"

No.

Understand. I am not a dependent, needy spouse who can't be alone. I like to be alone. We're together enough. We're apart enough. This isn't about me cramping his style.

"It can't wait."

"Why?"

"I have to deliver some bad news."

"Why can't you do it on the phone?"

"He won't answer the phone. It's Shabbas."

"Right. But why can't it wait."

"He tested positive for Covid-19."

Short pause.

"Who is it?" (not that he would tell me, but a girl can try)

"You don't know him."

"You are not going there."

"I have to go."

"You are not going inside that house!"

"I won't go inside the house."

"You promise?"

"I promise."

"You're crazy. Don't you dare go into that house."

It is bad enough, I tell him, that he tests these people. It is bad enough that he hasn't retired, left this practice. But he leaves to see a man and tell him that although he seems healthy, that he has coronavirus, Corona-19.

Did you know that there are several types of coronavirus? This is why they call it 19, because it presented in 2019. About six weeks ago FD had a case of a different coronavirus. That patient was very sick, too, hospitalized. FD started to cough, sure that he probably caught it. I kept my distance. His case, if it was corona, was very mild. Are we having fun yet?

He returns in a half hour to tell me they spoke through the screen door, glass in lieu of screens. We live in Chicago. It is still cold. Yesterday the temps were in the 20's.

I look deeply into FD's eyes. Because he cares about them, too. He cares about his patients, too. And there are times, there really are some people, who can't do it by phone.

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