By: Dr. Greg Blackmon
As I sit enjoying my sliced apple reading an article from the New Yorker (linked below), I realize. Today is the day. Myself, my bride and most of my daughters have COVID. I would encourage all to respect it. I didn’t say fear. I said respect. As a pediatrician, I am continually surrounded by gaggles of children of various ages who are more than pleased to share whatever secretions they may be shedding. Often these secretions contain certain agents I would rather avoid. But. I love these little ankle bitters-even the bigger, green-hair,-too-cool-to-make-eye-contact-ankle biting teenagers. From the first day of medical school pediatrics was for me. My friends thought I was crazy. We would be fishing for trout in the Watauga river on a Saturday morning talking about the future and they would ask “Why?” I’m not sure I ever really gave them a good answer. And today I have COVID.
My bride needs a surgical procedure on her cervical spine. Sounds scary. But I have faith in the system which trained me. Generations have been pushed, questions, pimped, and challenged. The process isn’t easy but I respect the process. I trust her surgeon. I trust in our system of medical school education that created him. I watch third year medical students enter my clinic afraid to touch the door knob of a patient room and four weeks later come to me with constructive patient histories and thoughtful differential diagnoses. The growth in a few short weeks always amazes. And the ones who see the joy in the ankle bitters, well those are my people. One can’t expect them to “know” Pediatrics during their short time in our clinic. After twenty years, I do not “know” Pediatrics. It is a perpetual journey. But, the process! It is amazing.
And. My bride needs surgery. As a pre-operative test she was required to have a COVID screen. Two days later, the call came and she was positive. Surgery postponed. Two days later, my test was positive. And the fun begins. Initially, symptoms were mild perhaps a small cough or some fatigue. And as the week went on things worsened. Bounding headaches, chills and general inability to due pretty much anything became the norm. Although I never developed a documented fever the bone-crushing chills (which two blankets, sweat pants, a fleece vest and fuzzy socks couldn’t cure) put me in a supine position on our couch for an entire day. I think I watched several movies but am unsure what the first two were. And for those unaware, I hate, loathe, despise laying on the couch all day. God did not create this 51 year old worker bee for such. I simply was unable to function. This was my COVID experience.
And. Today is the day. Today I have the energy. I can focus. I can spend an hour on a lengthy review article on gastro-esophageal reflux and retain it. Today I can craft a message to My Team. I can challenge them to consider our approach with the new information I have gleaned. I can appreciate the way they have stepped up to manage my ankle bitters during the mandatory quarantine. I can relate to my nurses attempting to juggle the volume of phone calls of the past week. I can appreciate our staff picking up the slack as we are overwhelmingly understaffed. I can understand the frustration some families may have with me not being in the office as planned. And then there is COVID.
The exact system I am trusting to relieve the pain in my Bride, didn’t have much to teach me about COVID. We are all learning. News updates, CDC guidelines and weekly hospital reports only tell a fraction of the story. I’ve watched how COVID has affected my patients and their families. I am understanding the psychological toll it has on my teenagers. I understand the need to push my vision to new potential concerns. Is that child hungry? Is that bruise abuse? Are those parents ok? These questions are of equal importance to those of “How is the child breathing?”, “What is the fever?”, and “When was the last urine output?” And. COVID has taught me what it feels like. My course was mild. And each day is a bit better.
Recent history has taught me a bit about COVID. But today is for other things. Today is the day I learn more about gastro-esophageal reflux. And today is a day to reach out to a reader. Perhaps someone needs to know people are working for them. Perhaps someone is just trying to make some sense of it all. Alone in your home and scared, exhausted from your long shift in the emergency room or struggling with why you should even wear a damn mask-just know people are working for you. Even in the time of COVID, the system is working.
Three Ways of Looking at Children and the Coronavirus
A good friend recently invited me to meet his spiritual guide via Zoom. The spiritual guide does energy work, which he claims requires no physical proximity and works based on principles of Christianity and quantum mechanics. After some introduction of his methods, the spiritual guide turned his attention to me, rotating a small wooden bar in the air and snapping his fingers against his hand in order to confer on me protection from the novel coronavirus. I could see his living room behind him, Read in The New Yorker.
