My husband is a Surgeon: This is not a Drill

My husband is a surgeon working in one of the largest hospitals in the country. He has been working non stop in the emergency department since the outbreak. The ER is now filled to capacity every day with nothing but critically ill COVID patients. Surgeons are on front line since we don’t have enough ER docs for all these patients. When he finally gets a short break, he collapses on the floor in the Surgeon’s lounge: too exhausted to take off his PPE covered, blood drenched scrubs to go to the locker room to change. He eats his dinners (delivered to him by a Door Dasher) on the floor while he writes notes, too exhausted to sit up at a table. Many floors in the hospital are overrun with hundreds of COVID patients. The situation is so dire that surgeons are now working as ICU docs since the ICU is at capacity and we don’t have enough intensivists to take care of them all. The hospital is on diversion every night: they cannot take in any more COVID patients. If you are critically ill with a different condition, you are in trouble: because the ICUs are now filled with nothing but COVID patients. The hospital is bursting with nothing but COVID patients (the regular patients are all taken care of by telemedicine) so hospitals are on the brink of financial collapse. There is no room to put more patients, no docs to take care of them. I will end with a quote from Maggie Smith in A Room With A View: “There is nothing worse than death.” This virus is literally killing us all with overwork. And no: you are not invincible. You are nothing but a potential paycheck to my husband if you catch the virus. This is not a drill. This is real life. Stay the F at home: please. And for God’s sake: do not vote for that orange douchebag that pretends this virus is nothing but the common cold. We are all at the breaking point: exhausted, physically and mentally: and some of us have broken. #staysafestayhome #listentoyourdoctor