This was sent to me by a co-worker who finished his anesthesia residency this past Summer at Columbia in NYC. One of his residency classmates wrote it, and it got published in The Atlantic. Columbia in NYC was the proverbial Second Battle of Fallujah or COP Keating in medical terms last Spring.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...an-get/617302/
While often I’m the first to dismiss The Atlantic as liberal crap, this particular piece comes with the backing of a colleague who was physically present to verify that the author is honest. It also squares as a less intense version of what I’m seeing today.
Basically, there is a sharp divide among the healthcare workers who experience the toll daily, and the portion of the public who use terms like “case endemic.” A similar phenomenon happened with the 2% who fought in the sandbox and the rest of America that went to the mall - the two sides don’t understand each other because their experiences are not aligned.
Here is a screen shot of a text exchange 2 days ago between me and a 45-year old friend from residency who developed severe ARDS in 24 hours. He is an emergency physician, intensivist, and Air Force CCATT veteran:
Keep in mind this guy is a PT stud and physician who literally thought he was going to die alone from drowning as he watched his monitor read a pulse ox of 69% while he was sucking 60 liters on a high-flow nasal cannula. A nurse who he had never met stayed by his bedside, holding his hand while his own partners debated intubating him. That is the reality that those of us who work in America’s ICUs are now seeing daily - people in their 40s and 50s drowning to death...alone...multiple times each day.