blissful ignorance
I cried this morning. Like, really cried. This sh!t is stressful.
When my dad died in 2001, it was the first time I lost somebody really close. I remember the feeling of waking up at peace, having forgotten for just that early-morning instant that he was gone. Then my brain would catch up to reality and deliver the crushing realization that my world had changed forever. I grew to dread mornings because I knew what was coming: blissful ignorance and then the breathtaking plunge into the depths of loss... it was like losing him over and over again, every single day.
As I wrestle with this new situation today, I’m having those kinds of moments. The reality is that nothing really bad has happened to me, yet I’m feeling a ton of stress as we collectively wait. Is this the blissful ignorance of early morning?
I woke up at 6:25 a.m., half an hour before my alarm, made myself a coffee in my travel mug, and took myself for a walk around the neighborhood. I figure it’s still social distancing if it’s before 7 a.m. and there are few people around. And it’s a change in routine for me, since I usually buy my coffee at a shop nearby. I stepped out of my apartment to another spectacular rainbow over the ocean. It feels like the universe is reminding me about silver linings, with two straight mornings of rainbows.
While I walked, I listened to the New York Times’ The Daily podcast — a regular listen. The host interviewed Dr. Fabiano Di Marco, a 47-year-old doctor in Bergamo, Italy, who shared his personal experience from the incredibly difficult past three weeks of his daily life. We expect doctors to be able to make life-or-death decisions, but it was clear from listening to this guy that they are dealing with life-or-death on a whole new level.
He explained there’s a formula that ER staff would typically use to determine who gets access to critical-level care. Under normal circumstances – like just three weeks ago, in Italy -- the patient’s level of illness is what medical staff would use to make decisions during the triage process. So, when an 86-year-old man presented with pneumonia and early stages of liver failure, doctors would evaluate the severity of his illness and of course send him straight to a critical care ward. That’s because without that level of care, the sick grandfather would die.
But there is no formula for what is happening now in Italy, where there is a shortage of critical care beds and medical teams have to make truly terrible choices. What the doctors need to decide now is who among the surplus of critically ill patients is most likely to benefit from the care they might receive. And it might not be that critically ill 86-year-old patient. It might be the 50-something guy who needs a ventilator to survive his bout of Covid-19. There’s just no formula for that.
The doctor sounded exhausted. He’s carrying an incredible burden.
Early on in this crisis, as we were all just starting to hear about this new flu, New York Times health reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. was a guest on the same podcast. He described the impact of the 1918 pandemic, saying that everybody knew somebody who lost somebody. I have a habit of visiting graveyards when I’m in small, historic towns. They’re peaceful places that are full of love, with all those heartfelt tributes etched in stone for eternity. But man. There are a lot of grave markers from 1918 and 1919.
I knew somebody who lost somebody. My great-grandmother died in the Spanish Flu. My grandmother, her daughter, was just eight at the time. And through her 80s, my grandmother could still share with me the clearest loving memories from her childhood with her mother: sitting together on her sick bed and bringing a dying woman comfort by running a brush through her waist-length hair.
It’s a melancholy morning. I’m exhausted already, and this thing hasn’t even started for us yet.
Rainbows aren’t working, but breakfast is my favorite meal of the day so Imma leave this right here.