Thread by @DrKate_Miller

I'm going to tell a story about last year that is on my mind and asking to be told today. I have changed details to protect privacy, and it's a common story played out countless times. Content warning: distressing and discusses death.

Last year at our site outbreak, I went to cover a service whose team had been suddenly furloughed. It had its first positive cases there, and I'd been looking after covid patients on another service already, so it made sense for me to go.

I arrived with my two junior doctors (the word junior does them a disservice, they were outstanding). I got them to start swabbing everyone so we knew what we were dealing with, then started seeing everyone to work out who was symptomatic.

It was hot and the nurse unit manager (NUM) was run off her feet organising nursing staff, while the most incredible grad nurses in the universe, kept the patients safe and hydrated. It was chaotic but the place was carried by the dedicated staff.

The service was for patients recovering from illnesses who couldn't get home because they were still just that bit too sick and needed help to get moving again. They were a mix of surprised, distressed, and oblivious to the staff suddenly in blue gowns, shields, & masks.

On my round I found you confused, symptomatic and crying. You asked me what was happening, why were we all dressed like this?
I remember you were coughing and coughing, and your temperature was 39.5C. I told you there was an outbreak and...

...that we were dressed like this to keep the ward safe. You could sense the urgency, people were rushing to get everything done, to secure the ward so it was safe. You told me you were scared and even though that urgency meant I needed to keep going, I sat down and..

held your hands in my blue gloved ones. I told you that things would calm down soon. "Please doctor", you cried, "please let me go home".
You hadn't recovered from your illness and like most of the people on the ward, weren't well enough to be at home yet. You cried and cried.

I explained that it was too dangerous, and you begged me to let you go. I told you that once things calmed down and when you were feeling better, we'd start planning to get you home again. You settled. But deep down I knew what was going to happen.

I'd avidly read the accounts of Italy and New York, I'd asked everyone I knew from overseas of their experience. And I'd been a student of history and pandemics well before this. We had no vaccine, one hail-Mary drug and no high flow oxygen. I knew. Maybe you did too.

The rest of that day in my mind is a mix of logistics, phone calls, and tears (staff and patients). The national guidance was still for surgical masks at this stage. We knew nothing about tea rooms. I ate in the tea room with all of my colleagues.

Two days later I went into hotel isolation. A colleague had tested positive. In the end, everyone who worked on the ward became positive, except for me. I will never know why.

And I never saw you again. 10 days later you died from Covid, peacefully I'm told, with good palliative care. You were one of those people that when someone dies from covid asks "but did they have comorbidities?" Yes. But you were you. A person. You were someone.

Covid (for me anyway), isn't about politics. It knows neither left or right, state or federal. It doesn't care what moment a cult is having about it. It is about you. It is about us and who we are. How we respond to this defines who we are.

We may not always get it right but we are here to try, and we have to try. Not to give up. Not to let it take away more of us, friends, family, mothers, fathers, grandparents, sisters, brothers and children. This is about all of us.

You weren't a list of comorbidities. You were you. And if I could go back in time, I wish I could have put you in a wheelchair, and walked you home where you belonged. I will never, ever forget you.