By Maia Dorsett, MD, PhD, FAEMS
Editor, @EMS_MEd
One week ago today, I had my family move out of my house and in with my parents who live around the corner. I had read the data about healthcare workers bringing the virus home, and I could not bear the thought of bringing it home to my parents who moved close to me when they retired this year.
In this time I’ve realized, probably like a lot of other people, that I am a much more social person that I thought I was. I have a renewed appreciation for direct human connection – for hugging my children tight, preparing meals for my family, for going out for a cold beer and warm food with my colleagues after a long shift in the ED. When I am not at work in the ED, answering calls from my EMS agency or responding to COVID-19 emails, I feel quite lonely. I always thought that if I had some time to myself at home I could be so much more productive, but I have found that my productivity on anything non-COVID-19 related has basically come to a halt. My mental processors are so overladen trying to make sense of a daily torrent of changing information that I find myself cognitively slowed and unable to push through on any of the projects that I had only wished for the time to work on before.
As a mental health break, I have been going outside to puddle around in my garden. The cognitive silencing of cleaning out garden beds and weeding is strangely rejuvenating. But more so, in my garden, I have found a sense of hope. As I have raked away the leaves and trimmed dead stalks, everywhere there is new life emerging. The ridiculous number of bulbs and perennials that I, after compulsively internet ordering in the wee hours of the night after ED shifts, planted in the Fall are emerging after surviving the harsh Rochester winter. These plants did more than survive the Rochester winter, they used the cold weather to break down seed coats and start biochemical processes so that they could make their comeback stronger and more beautiful than they were in the previous year. It is my garden that has instilled in me this wish as we enter this tidal wave: let us be more than resilient, let us be Antifragile. On the other side of this, whenever that may be, let us build a system better than we have today.
In recent weeks, I have felt like I am being eaten from the inside out by frustration. By relaxing PPE regulations that are more a response to shortage than science. By the inability to test for the disease. By wading through a sea of unknowns and feeling like everything is blurry when I want it more than anything to be clear. By wishing I could do more to change the course of what is to come. But I hope that we are like the perennials in a garden, taking this time to sew roots that will make us stronger and better in the future. Let this be a time of great innovation and recognition of the importance of emergency preparedness and public health. With a proverbial winter upon us, I see the signs of these fragile roots emerging all around us: recognition of EMS as frontline healthcare, alternative destinations, hospital cooperation to reduce ED volumes, change in production lines, adaptability and more.
While it feels lonely with my family out of the house, I have also never in my career felt a stronger sense of togetherness – of a shared purpose with amazing, dedicated and selfless people who truly care for those around them.
The weight is heavy, but we will lift it together. Let us be stronger on the other side.
Maia Dorsett is an Emergency Medicine and EMS Physician, wife, daughter, sister, mother of 3 and fellow human being residing and working in Rochester, New York. Priorities not in that order.