Ode to my colleagues

When I wake up at 6 a.m., I try not to open my phone’s Internet too soon. I try to delay the inevitable. After about 45 minutes, I turn it on. Since we are in this crazy epidemic, there have been several WhatsApp groups which have sprung up. I usually try to steer away from most groups, but in the last two years, I felt I had no choice; I needed the groups. Why do I need it so much? Mostly because things change almost daily. There are so many nitty gritty details that need to be fine-tuned. The main guidelines are sent from the ministry of health or the health funds we work for here in Israel. But somehow, it always seems like the patient sitting in front of you, does not fit nicely into the guidelines. They will need special attention, special instructions for me and for them. Read: Dr. Dalhia Chiche-More: Physician-assisted . . . So I open a WhatsApp group. It is now seven in the morning and I have missed, since last night at 11 p.m., some 60 messages. When I tell that to people who do not work in the field, they usually respond saying, “of course you just delete them, right?” But I do not. I scroll as fast as I can, because almost every question posed has an answer I need to read. But that is not the main reason. I read them all because I am interested in the answers. The information I do not need today, I will surely need tomorrow. I find it so inspiring to see that a physician can ask a question at 2 a.m. and another one answers at 2:05. They understand each other, and the urgency that must be causing a doctor to ask a question at 2 a.m. Perhaps he did not have enough time during the day to answer all the telemedicine inquiries. Or maybe he was asking about his own family member. Which is no less stressful, of course. Every question is prefaced with “I am sure this has been asked before but....” No one ever says that it has. There is always someone who will try to help out, understanding that we are all in the same boat and that if we don’ t help each other, the stress of the load will become unbearable. So we help each other, at any hour that we can, and we know that one day this will all be over. I am not sure if medicine will ever be the same again. Will I ever check a patient again without a mask, glove or lab coat? Will I ever feel like I am proficient in something, or feel that what I know today may not be obsolete in a few days? Will I ever feel confident in my care, and fearless of being contaminated? I am really not sure what will be, when this is all over. But I know that this period has given me a sense of belonging and mostly a sense of pride in the wonderful colleagues that I have, some of whom I have never even met. And there is one thing that I hope will not change after this pandemic: I hope that these special WhatsApp groups will remain so that we can continue to help each other. Indeed we have a created a community and one that I am very proud to be part of. Dr. Dalhia Chiche-More is a family doctor and writer based in Jerusalem.

Ode to my colleagues

Register for free access or login.

Related Topics