Moving Apart (Social Distancing)

 Dr. K S Prasanna, Dermatologist, Institute of Applied Dermatology, Kasaragod, Kerala

It was the month of June 2020 when our elder son, a senior internal medicine graduate student called  “I am posted in the COVID 19 ward for a couple of weeks, after which I will be in isolation in another hostel. I will be very busy and not be able to make time to talk to you for two weeks. We are not getting the proper personal protective equipment (PPE). If the hospital authorities don`t supply proper PPE, we are at risk while at work. However, we do not deny our duties, but we want to protect ourselves before giving care to those in ventilators. I will text you the updates”.

 Naturally, I was terrified to hear this story of struggling to get proper PPE, in addition to the corona viral scare. At the same time, however, I was fiercely proud of him saying “WE DO NOT DENY OUR DUTY”.

 These young doctors are not derelict in their duties but do want to protect themselves at the same time. It is a war-like situation for everyone involved while giving Corona care, including the parents.

 Two days later, he informed us that the authorities had kept the dead body of a patient who died of COVID 19 in their donning room for an entire night. In the morning, whoever comes for duty would not able to don the PPE, unless the room is fumigated. Another horror story, and another sleepless night for the parents. After hostilities with the hospital management were resolved, the graduate students succeeded in getting proper PPE. They completed the first COVID duty, only to be posted for another COVID duty merely 3 weeks later!

 During his second duty, one anesthesia post-graduate student contracted COVID and was on the ventilator. She needed an Injection, Tocilizumab, to manage the cytokine storm, which is essentially the immune system ravaging the body that it was formed to protect, which is a common cause of death in COVID. It is an expensive drug, with a price of about 70,000-150,000rs in the black market. Despite having stocked it in the hospital pharmacy, they didn't give it to her. Her peers somehow managed to get the medicine from another city which is 125 km away. Somehow with all struggle and voluntary resignation of his head of the department for not able to help her residents, he completed the second duty. While he was on quarantine after his second duty, on the seventh day another one of his peers was tested positive for COVID 19. After his third COVID duty which was for a longer period, he got COVID and recovered. We believed in God and nothing else as parents, we could do.

Our second son, who is in the final year MBBS, is also 500 kilometers away from home. He also doesn't want to come home, again for fear of transmitting the infection to his parents suspecting that he might be the carrier.

Anybody could imagine the plight of parents like us. I believe that these residents are actual corona warriors. They are saving the lives of hundreds of seriously ill COVID patients, intubating them, despite inadequate protection and a lack of support from their management. The number of patients is more, but doctors are less. India should produce more doctors and should provide more facilities for doctors. When will this deadly virus vanish from our community?

This is the one disease that has separated parents from their loved doctor children, physician husband from his wife, and vice versa. These warriors don`t want to come home for the fear of transmitting the virus to the parents or children. When will it end? How can all of us spend our lives together? When we grow old, we hoped that our son, who is going to be a physician, stay and care for us, better than we did him. But, because of this deadly virus that targets the elderly, will he come and stay with us for fear of transmitting the virus or where will he stay after his duty? This unanswered question fills me with sorrow and pain. I am not able to find an answer, and it seems that only time will answer.