Life has slowed down in so many ways. Less rush. Waiting. Like the experience at sea. The weather often decides the set of the sail and the angle of the tack. So Dr. Fauci told us all the virus has it’s own time. But now the juggling has begun again in earnest. The commander must decide what is the risks of boat failing, wind pressure, seas, experience and tolerance of his crew. Each person has there own concerns and perception but the balancing and juggling act is far beyond the parts that make up the whole.
We had a lock down and quarantine to delay the rush on limited health care resources. We needed time to get labs up and running to speed. We needed to train personnel. Here the College of Physicians and Surgeons brought back retired doctors at lightning speed. In the US when hydroxychloroquine was found to be a miraculous cure ,the FDA burocracy which normally would take a year to repurpose a drug, did it in weeks at presidential order. Countless lives have been saved. Locally Mr. Horgan, BC Premier, found 140 respirators decommissioned and set the amazing engineers and technicians to refurbishing them. It’s been a race against time. The BC CDC has reported all the breakthroughs on it’s wonderfully researched pages. Dr. Bonnie Henry, our incredible Chief Medical Officer, has daily told us exactly what we needed to hear. Locally the response has been an overwhelming success.
China’s lost millions and lied again and again about the disease and about their response. As did Iran with their mass graves, denied, but showing to the overhead satellites. Here we have been blessed with great leadership and some luck as well since ,we’ve missed a very big bullet. In New York it struck with a vengeance because of elevators railings and buttons. In Japan they had to early recognize the trains as vectors of spread. In Italy it was the close family communities and vulnerable eldersly. But everywhere in the west, as had been done in the Asian democracies ,people rose to the occasion. Authoritarian and malevelent forces tried to carry out their own agendas without consideration of the whole. Despite all this the good prevailed.
Despite the corruption of the WHO ,so reminiscent of the failure of the Red Cross in Canada when the AIDS epidemic struck, wiser minds ,less greedy and self seeking moved, forward and filled the horrible gaps.
My young schizophrenic patients began to do the shopping for their elderly neighbours and family members leaving groceries on the doorsteps and saving them from going out into the the temporarily hostile world.
It’s a marathon. Social distancing, hand washing, masks. But now we’ve businessess preparing to return to working. In weeks more and more people will be back to work. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. The weather is increasingly warm. The sun is shining.
We have every reason for praise and thanksgiving. Thank you God and thank you all who have done so much good to bring us through this first phase of such a wantonly unnecessary crisis. Now the economic restoration begins. The anxious shouldered the heavier load while the depressed more often than not were lifted out of themselves seeing that others needed them and finding health in purpose.
I’m enjoying walking my dog. I’m enjoying the morning commute from bedroom to living room. I’m loving the slower pace. I’m glad to be over that initial terror, those early days of uncertainty and fear. I feel sad for the third world and the dictatorships where human life individually doesn’t count. The illness and death will persist longer there whereas here we’re already crested the wave. Local companies are making more masks. Pharmacies are finding more hydroxychloroquine. Pharmaceutical development is shifting from untrustworthy China to Israel,the recipient of so many Nobel prizes for research and manufacture. More lab agents are being manufactured and testing here has surpassed South Korea. We know so much more thanks to Italy and Spain and Iceland and those stalwart souls trapped in cruise ships for the duration.
We are past Easter, a time of renewal and resurrection. Today is 4/20, the time when Willie Nelson appears to so many . The saddest part of this all has been we can’t hold hands or hug in circles. The saddest are the family members separated at the time of death. The loneliness has been heart rending.
I miss my dear friend Laura who continues to work in close proximity with high risk patients. I have friends who I’ve reached out to but have yet to hear back from. I’m so thankful my family has been well and safe. The immunosuppressed, the elderly and those with heart and lung disease all suffered most from the fear that if they became ill there might not be a hospital room or a respirator. That’s how fortunate we’ve been here. No hard choices like they made in Italy or Spain. I’ll never forget the older priest who died having said that the young man could have his respirator. I’m so thankful for the pregnant women with Covid 19 who survived the disease and now are reunited with their new born babies well.
It’s been an emotional roller coaster with the wonderful reprieve of great humor and great funny songs.
A couple of weeks more or days and we’ll be safer as the economic risks increase and threaten us as once the disease itself had. I remember sailing through hurricane force winds. I’d pass through the eye of the storm and the confusing seas get hit again by more winds before the winds would die. The winds would die and tthe seas would be churned up for days would remain high for another day before the calm of wind and sea returned. . Even though the ultimate dangers of high winds and terrible seas had passed it was a day or two before the seasettled.
Fair winds and following seas, I wish my family and friends today. Thank you God for grace and kindsness. Thank you all for love and humor and joy. Hallelujah!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment