‘I Cried Multiple Times’: Now Doctors Are the Ones Saying Goodbye

Sweet lord. We are wimps. For centuries, doctors fought viruses and diseases and impossible childbirth situations and did it professionally and with empathy. What on earth has happened to us as a people that everything is emotional and devastating. When do we build the COVID memorials? Smh.

All these deaths are sad, and I feel sad for all the healthcare workers who have to witness them. You are heroes, and I am thankful that you are all willing to go to the front lines everyday.

Hospital Administrators and Medical Group Directors and Executives; Mayors, Governors, and FEMA: WHERE ARE THE CISM (Critical Incident Stress Management) TEAMS TO HELP not just EMS and Fire and Police, but also OUR DEVOTED HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS (doctors, nurses, social workers, therapists, even janitorial staff)?? Unless you want a generation of 1st year interns, residents, and significant numbers of other American healthcare providers to fall to, and be impaired by, lasting PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), STEP UP NOW to mitigate against mass psychological/psychiatric casualties due to COVID19 and related exposures.

These doctors, nurses, EMT, firefighters, etc. are amazing people and, too often, unsung heroes. And so are all the lower level people who keep stores and businesses going...

America has such amazing physicians, and we should celebrate their service to all of us. My only question to these physicians is how many of these deaths could have been avoided if America had a different president who cared about American lives instead of maintaining his own grip on power.

At my son's medical school graduation, doctors in the audience were invited to repeat the Hippocratic Oath along with the graduating class. My wife stood up and took the oath along with our son so many years after she had first taken it. It was an incredibly emotional experience for all of us. Working on the front lines of COVID is another kind of commitment that doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers make and it is the embodiment of the oaths they take.

How awful - to come to the end of the line alone. The sense of isolation, of being a pariah, must be utterly overwhelming for those who are dying.

I am amazed at the unselfish heroism of our healthcare doctors, nurses and technicians. They enter their profession to help others and sometimes, as now, it is to the detriment of their own health and lives. When this is over we must continue to honor and thank them for making our world a better place. With or without Covid 19 our lives depend on them.

Kudos to the patients who refused mechanical ventilation, too, insisting on exercising their right to refuse futile treatment. The NYT and WaPo have done a good job reporting on the poor prognosis for older people who end up on ventilators after Covid-19 - even if they survive, they can face serious permanent debilitation in the form of dementia, lung damage, kidney failure, etc. I and most of the older people I know have decided to forego intubation, communicating this to family and reviewing our advance medical directives. Even before Covid-19, I had observed a disturbing trend toward mechanical ventilation and long ICU stays in the face of overwhelming evidence that the patient would not survive, even countermanding the patient's advance directives. Families seemed to want to be able to say, "We had the hospital do everything possible." Since when did filial piety require torturing a parent to death with a 3-week ICU stay?

My best friend is an ER doc in NYC. She is the least sentimental and most common sense person I know. She's worked to save lives in emergency rooms awash with blood and comforted those overcome with grief. For decades. We talk now of pre corona everyday things. I live in an edenic rural area with one positive case, I'm her respite. One day she blurted out "but the death". To me flattening the curve is covering my face at the market, for her it's seeing the bodies pile up all around her. Our bad political choices cause bad environmental and economic policies which promote viral transfer and prevent us from mitigating the inevitable outbreaks. Our bad choice of Trump and a Trump administration is forcing healthcare workers to make excruciating decisions under unconscionable conditions. It's literally killing them.

When this pademic ends, as it surely must, I hope we are wise enough to give the healthcare workers who have struggled to provide services to the sick and their families time to grieve. It is terribly hard to internalize that they cannot save all who come into the hospital and that they must comfort families who are unprepared for the finality of death. Doctors, nurses and other responders were trained to heal and their inability to do so is a kick in the gut for many of them. Give them space and let them recover their stability at their own pace. They are doing God's work.

We need to be sure these healthcare workers (angels?) are provided with treatment for the PTSD the survivors will surely experience.

Nothing short of a role reserved for the messenger of God, the medical professionals are performing while connecting the suffering souls to the weeping ones looking for the return of their loved ones struggling hard to ditch the coronavirus.

In memory of a man named Frank, with love and compassion. Soar, gentle soul.

The power of great journalism. Copies should be printed out and left on some desks in DC.

How many more will die if the country is reopened too soon? I don't think trump knows that people die, have died, because of his own behavior. He's simply not capable, morally or psychologically, of feeling connected to any of it. He must not be allowed to enact anything health and welfare are a part of. When others can see that, it becomes those others' responsibility to step in. It seems to be states' governors who are faced with that task next. I hope they won't allow this terrible loss and suffering to be protracted by rash misjudgment.

Trumpers in my neighborhood are still saying this is no worse than the flu. I’d give them this article, but that would be a waste of time.

Thank you, you are doing god’s work ! Again , thank you!

Last week while isolated at home I was able to partake in an effort to arrange a plasma donation for a friend. As the week went on she began to slowly recover, and her medical team ultimately decided not to use this therapy. Still, everyone involved learned much about the use of plasma in a few short days. I don’t think I am overstating it to say that rapid development, coordination and use of plasma to treat the coronavirus may be the most promising and immediate way forward in mitigating the pandemic's impact until a vaccine is introduced. Anyone who has had coronavirus and is recovered or recovering should seriously consider "paying it forward" with a plasma donation, which has therapeutic use in current patients. There are many current efforts at coordinating between potential donors, hospitals, doctors and their patients, including information and registries for potential donors at the New York Blood Center, the American Red Cross and the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project: https://www.nybloodcenter.org/donate-blood/convalescent-plasma/ https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/dlp/plasma-donations-from-recovered-covid-19-patients.html https://ccpp19.org/donors/index.html

Great story.

I feel stupid complaining about boredom and cabin fever while holed up comfortably in my home with my wife and daughters, with all my extended family safe and well in theirs. We can’t forget that this is not just a major inconvenience for everyone. For many, it is the end.

I was an Army physician in Baghdad in 2003-2004. My days were filled by emergencies, young men and women torn apart, some asking me to save their limb, others asking me if they would die. Many lost their limbs and some died. They were also alone and we did not have a way to communicate with families easily. I was a mother, friend, nurse and doctor to these patients and tired my best to keep it together for them and my mostly younger ER staff, though it did get to be to much and I cried in the supply closet. Reading this brings it all back.

My daughter is a critical doctor, treating covid ventilator patients. She says that she wants families to know that their loved ones aren't dying alone. The health care teams are with the patient, and they feel every death like it's one of their own family. The great thing about our health care workers is the respect they hold for every individual.

"We can not normalize this." Indeed. This is a cruel time for our human family and it will leave many scars. Until the vaccination is invented, resilience, hope and support of one other is the only medicine we have.

Medical personnel are exhausted and overwhelmed. Frankly, I think they should cry to allow themselves to express their emotions. They are, after all, human beings.

Yes well, the AMA has been one of the leading obstacles to a robust health care system in the US, the for profit health care system has cut costs and left itself unable to cope with these events that experts have predicted for years with which we have had several close calls and lastly check the polls the specialists voted in big numbers for the GOP, the enablers of all this. Sounds like the chickens have come home to roost.

Thank you, doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers who are caring for us during this crisis. It cannot be overstated the confidence, comfort, and safety that doctors have made me feel in the past, going in for a serious surgery as a 16 year old or a recent colonoscopy. Your service to our country, not just now but always, is immeasurable. And your care makes us feel better-- emotionally if not physically. I know this must be the case for those who are in your care today, too.

Thank you for this well-written, moving article. We owe a debt to those who staff our medical facilities (physicians and nurses, social workers and chaplains, maintenance and cleaning staff, and so many others) that I imagine we will never be able to repay. I am so, so grateful to them.

I am a retired physician. I remember when a patient on occasion passed away on a ward , and you had to do the examination to declare death, and then have to find the words to use to say to the family; it was wrenching and disorienting. I cannot fathom having to multiply that experience so many times a day.

A similar scenario happened when my sister Kelly was admitted to the ICU at Stoneybrook Hospital last week. Kelly had been sick for ten years from a mysterious auto immune illness that left her paralyzed from the neck down for the last five. We knew, as soon as we heard, she had contracted the disease that her days were numbered, however her three young daughters could not find the courage to pull the plug. What followed was a waiting period of 72 hours where the virus spread exponentially and the hospital and staff were being overwhelmed with new patients. I expected a call at any minute that situational needs would supersede my sisters life. Instead the staff showed an emotional and professional maturity that my nieces couldn't muster and they arranged for facetime for goodbyes and a proper amount of time for Kelly's daughters to come to the realization that she wasn't coming back. I was not privy to the final conversations but I'm sure the staff treated her with dignity, empathy and emotional support. I know this wasn't the ideal way for her to pass but I'm glad to know that, even if she didn't have her loved ones around for the end, at least she was surrounded by some very special humans.

Very sad. A few weeks ago I had a heart attack and nobody was permitted to visit me. Despite that the very decent nurses on the cardiology ward kept my wife and son well informed about how things were going for me via the phone. I was for the most part kept isolated and sedated, but did get my cell phone and charger sent to me before being released. I do thank them all even if I may have been rather grumpy most of the time I was awake.

Very sad. A few weeks ago I had a heart attack and nobody was permitted to visit me. Despite that the very decent nurses on the cardiology ward kept my wife and son well informed about how things were going for me via the phone. I was for the most part kept isolated and sedated, but did get my cell phone and charger sent to me before being released. I do thank them all even if I may have been rather grumpy most of the time I was awake.

To be forced to choose between using a precious PPE to hold my dying patient’s hand, or saving it so the nurse would have a spare for tomorrow is not a decision this veteran hospice doctor could ever have imagined. The shortage of PPE has more implications than just stopping the spread of disease. It’s literally also killing our humanity.

We have heard the same things from our son, a doctor on the COVID front lines. We are terribly worried about him and his colleagues. Currently, they get one N95 mask per week! Their health is threatened in multiple ways. I don’t think they see themselves as heroes, but they are.

Thank you doctors, nurses and staff for fighting to connect and stay kind while fighting to stay safe and save lives. For taking that 'slow down' breath that allows you to see what's needed and respond with even the simplest connection. I believe these hundreds of moments and connections can actually help prevent PTSD because emotion is not being blocked but facilitated and experienced. What you/we learn here and now will echo down the years. Every 'small thing' matters. A voice speaking some kind and truthful words. A piece of music, making a joke - the sounds of living. A video of a loved one. Even a voice in the silence saying, "I'm here. I see you."

I am a Chaplain. Over the last few years much of my work has involved being the link between physicians and dying patients. Our work involves being the hands on care givers who try to help dying patients reconcile what their lives have been at the end of life. The work is difficult but always very rewarding. It is a gift of Grace to be able to help a person at the end of life to find the means to accept...the good, the bad, the pain, the joy the faults and the accomplishments with equanimity...because there is always hope...even at the last breath. Most of us are so hard on ourselves...struggling with the things we might have done wrong...instead of valuing the entirety of our life’s story. I frequently find myself trying to help patients to understand and accept what brought them joy. Our work is very “hands on” . The hugs, the hands we hold, the whispered confidences, the directed gaze into the soul...all of that requires us to be close...sometimes very close...and this is something that is now very difficult to do with requirements to be outside a room, on a phone rather than next to a bed. It is making our work and that of all first line staff very difficult to do. Even at the end of life, I have found there is often an uplifting and inspirational arc that helps both the patient the staff and...me. Much of the required distancing is eliminating the opportunity for such interplay and distancing us from the crucial work we must and need to do.

Thank you to all the caregivers, speedy recovery to the ill, easy deaths for the dying, comfort to all the families, and come on science! This is an international tragedy - we will get through it. America is a great country and we can beat this. We have so many good people, smart people, and loving people. Be good to yourselves, everybody. Without meaning to be trite, this too shall pass. I’m at home with two derailed college students and a high school junior. One of my kids is with their other parent, holing up there. I work full time, in the office every other day behind closed doors, the thinking being that the

One of the harsh lessons being doled out by coronavirus is that, socially and scientifically, we are under evolved. From the social aspect, it seems that our anachronistic penchant for dividing society along lines of wealth is playing a vast part in the destruction of the meek, unrepresented, and those who are routinely discriminated against. The poor, for whom healthcare is but an unreachable fantasy, form an enormous swathe of American society: Trump, while riding on Obama’s coat tails, has created jobs by doing nothing except watching his predecessors policies create a nation of serfs. Now even those subservient jobs have vaporised because they were of low quality with no semblance of permanence or prospects. Scientifically, we flounder collectively to the machinations of epidemiologists who, statistically speaking, really have nothing to work from except morose computer models, as if human life is a binary digit. They, and other medical specialisations, should have been ready to catch Covid 19 by having a comprehensive testing programme ready to go with the purpose of isolating and treating the sick while leaving the balance of society to continue as well as it could. South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore did exactly that and are in recovery mode while we flounder helplessly with a disease that we cannot treat except through mechanical respiratory intervention. Endless war has left us desensitised to death abroad, now starkly aware of it at home. I hope we learn from this

This is a painful article to read. But, a necessary read. This is a scary illness and many are suffering and dying alone because of Trump’s choice to ignore the virus, lie about it, not enforce any early containment efforts, and to not prepare our PPE and ventilator stockpiles. Tragic all around.

Reading articles like this has consumed me for over a month now. It's hard to imagine being in the medical profession dealing with this, or being a family member having to say goodbye on a phone. I've forwarded at least 3 dozen articles to my sons- and also made it clear no vent and no feeding tube if I should be in the hospital with the virus. They're not buying it, and think I'm already giving up, but I'm over 60, and have some health issues- I highly doubt I could withstand it and recover when only 20% make it off that ventilator. I'm doing my best, been home reading articles (and commenting when I'm up to it), in between cooking for my husband- and haven't been in a store except for quick grocery trips since March 7th. Being in a rural town lake town of 2000 people with 50 square miles, there are under 4 known cases and no deaths here so far. I have the added luxury of being retired with land to walk around on and not bump into neighbors. But, my worries for everyone I know and care about, as well as those I don't know, continue. God bless these medical workers. I hope they stay healthy and strong.

Despite hearing the numbers coming out of New York, it’s hard to really try to imagine what it must be like for these front line healthcare workers. However, stories like this begin to shed light on the magnitude of the burden that theses healers bear. Clearly, these doctors are being pulled to their limits, but it’s impressive that while they are functioning in “war-time” conditions, they are still making the time and effort to care for the emotional needs of these critically ill patients and their families. My hat is off to them.

My daughter is a palliative care social worker. This is hard, heartbreaking work under “normal” circumstances, and even more so now, when the contact with families is all, by necessity, done on the phone or video chat, and their loved one is alone except for medical personnel.

Every person working in our hospitals hit by Covid-19 has my deepest gratitude and respect. “Thank you” simply isn’t enough. Donate to the funds we see in many communities to support medical and hospital personnel. At the same time, I am filled with rage at the president and his administration that deliberately failed to do anything for two crucial months in which they knew this was coming. They did not act to prepare the country with knowledge, protective equipment, and a cogent plan and means for testing and containment which will be necessary to restart life and our economy. They still don’t have a scientifically and economically sound plan. A pandemic is a disaster under any circumstance, but this one is doubly so due to the malfeasance of the Trump administration. How many people have needlessly died or suffered lasting consequences as a result?

Thank you for a revealing story. One that sheds light on this crisis. I can't help but worry that our medical professionals will have PTSD because of everything that they are giving, that we are asking of them. This virus has many victims. I run out of words trying to describe how this makes me feel. Our gratitude, our prayers are with each and every person helping on the front lines. May they receive the recognition that they deserve.

Incredibly moving article. Thanks to the medical workers who are having to do so much and so much more for linking patients with family at end of life situations. Wow.

This breaks my heart. I can’t imagine the toll it takes on the family’s and doctors and nurses and other front line health care heroes. God bless them all.

Better Said: Thank you for sharing this profound story. I grieve for you, for your colleagues, for the sick and dying, and for the families, the relatives of their departed loved ones. I grieve for all the history, and talent and intellect that dies with each victim of this horrid stealth-killer, Covid-19. I grieve for the love and laughter that each soul shared with us on Earth. I grieve for the potential and possibility and gifts to our society, our world that each victim will not have a chance to complete. You and all the Health Care Workers are in the rare position to be at the gateway of transition from life into death, from matter into spirit. Your loving kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration will be remembered. Your soul-wrenching work will grow your soul. We, who are not called upon to attend the last moments of the dying thank you for being our angels on the front line of this pandemic. May you find love and peace in your appointed task. I am reminded that Daniel Webster’s last words as he departed this mortal coil were these: “I STILL LIVE.”

Thank you for sharing this profound story. I grieve for you, for your colleagues, for the sick and dying, and for the families, the relatives of their departed loved ones. I grieve for all the history, and talent and intellect that dies with each victim of this horrid stealth-killer, Covid-19. I grieve for the love and laughter that each soul shared with us on Earth. I grieve for the potential and possibility and gifts to our society, our world that each victim will not have a chance to complete. You and all the Health Care Workers are in the rare position to be at the gateway of transition from life into death, from matter into spirit. Your loving kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration will be remembered. Your soul-wrenching work will grow your soul. We, who are not called upon to attend the last moments of the dying thank you for being our angels in the front line of this pandemic. May you find love and peace in your appointed task. I am reminded that Daniel Webster’s last words as he departed his mortal coil was this: “I STILL LIVE.”