A broken March Break x 3

You know what’s better than working as a doctor? Not working. At least for a few days. A family doctor just told me, “I’m tired. I need two weeks to do nothing.” If you’ve got kids in school, time off and away means trying to co-ordinate your break with their breaks. Our kids enjoy a popular Quebec ski resort that I’ll call Montagne. My kids like skiing, but they adore eating out, tubing, watching TV, a bit of laser tag and outdoor hot tub, and hanging out with friends. We always stop for poutine and sugar pie on the way home. It’s our little getaway. My husband complains, but he joins us to wrangle the kids and skis. After evil work in the ER, this is an absolute treat, and we only go once a year, so I close my eyes and pay the money. Read: Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes: Stop blaming family doctors Let me sum up our last three years of March Break. March Break 2020: cancelled. Montagne is closed for COVID. Quebec is the hardest-hit province with its early March Break travellers bringing home SARS-coV-2. Ski tickets moved to 2021. Too bad it was my daughter’s first year to get a free ski pass, but there’s always next year. We’re all doing our part to stop spreading a global pandemic. I don’t mind staying put and working. People think we’re heroes! March Break 2021: Montagne might be open, but we’ll forgo the risk of infection. Ski tickets are moved to 2022. My daughter loses any chance at free skiing—her pass expires. The vaccine is slowly getting rolled out across Canada. Oh, well. I guess I can do a few shifts. People are still hopeful. Planning March break 2022: my family is fully vaccinated up to the max for our age group. Great. I finally get to escape the ER and cash in on Montagne. Their clerks are a bit shirty about giving us ski credit until I get the email for someone who has more clout (message me if you want it. The Medical Post has my contact info). We’ve held off on skiing elsewhere during Omicron because it’s so transmissible. Hey, we’re going to Montagne and we can ski then! Then my infectious diseasepublic health friends chat group sent a link estimating two million Quebecers, or one quarter of the province, developed COVID since December. The next link talks about removing vaccine passports and masks indoors. Wait a minute. My brain scrambles, trying to figure out some way that my family can still go safely to Montagne. We can’t. COVID infections + safety measures removed = more COVID. COVID will boom, but since we’re taking away testing and reporting, who will know? Only the people who are sick, disabled with long COVID, or who die. And no one wants to hear about that. People make over-simplistic, untrue comments like “Kids don’t get sick from COVID!” or “Kids don’t die from COVID!” In fact, children (and all people) get sick. Children die. Children end up with higher rates of diabetes, or cursed with long COVID. But if you mention kids who die, it gets deflected with “Well, they must have had something wrong with them.” Not my kid, not my grandmother, not me, not my problem. And for what? Because adults are sick of wearing masks and showing vaccine passports, the noisy few agitate for “freedom,” and politicians want to win votes by making things easy instead of protecting the vulnerable. Vaccine booster rates plummet. Health care workers are told not to wear scrubs to work to avoid harassment. People are told not to wear masks on the streets of Ottawa while the nation’s capital is besieged by antivaxxers. I dreaded telling my children that our ski trip had been cancelled for the third time. First I told my son, who is older. I started by explaining current estimated COVID rates and their plan to lift of safely protocols before and during March Break. “So we’re not going to Montagne?” he asked. “That’s right.” He didn’t cry. He didn’t say much of anything. He understood. The next morning, I told my daughter. She, too, got it as soon as I put the equation together. “So we’re not going to Montagne?” “Right.” She nodded and kept cutting a piece of cheese. “I’d rather have no Montagne and no COVID than Montagne and COVID.” I hugged her. Three years of no March Break is a significant percentage of her lifetime, and she could still make the sacrifice without blinking. If you’re out there, still working, still doing your best to guard against COVID to protect your own bubble and also the more vulnerable, I see you. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice. Our work is not in vain. This, too, shall pass.

A broken March Break x 3

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Dr. Melissa Yuan-Innes

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