COVID-19: The Second Wave, a Tsunami - Part 4

 My personal battles:

Having been part of the team during the previous wave and after returning to the department as its head in the early part of the year, I had to be in control of things while taking the team along during this wave. As the number of cases increased in the last few days of February, from 4 to 40 and then 80 over 3 days, it was time for a physician to be amongst the junior doctors managing the patients till then. Underestimating the direction this surge would take and thinking of it to be a short spike, we decided to keep the juniors in the zone managing the patients, and senior physicians to take rounds twice a day. I volunteered to be there for the task, as all other senior physicians were staying with their families and would have risked taking the infection back home. This arrangement worked well, till the numbers got out of hand to over 140, and in mid-April, a team of doctors was sent to live inside the zone in a 10-day cycle for better management. I continued to take my once daily rounds, and assist the doctors in the reception for triage, or guide the logistic management. Evening rounds would be to selective wards, just to interact with patients, and in some cases, listen to their grievances or positive feedbacks. Soothing words to allay anxiety, reassuring them of our best, helped them overcome the stress of this dreaded infection, which was by now taking away many near and dear ones, for the patients still fighting their battle.

My morning hour of running would hold me in good stead for the rest of the day to fight my battles. I was glad I could overcome my injury just in time to get into daily jogs of 6-10k, and keep my mind sane.

After having returned from Pune after a week’s break in mid-march, I was caught up with the flurry of activities here, and going back home was ruled out with a wave of cases and lockdown in both the states. With the battle raging, leave was curtailed, thus ensuring that no such luck would be possible till June at least after the wave shows some signs of regressing. With the assigned task still left undone, leave was last thing on my mind, anyways.

As the wave was showing signs of receding, the hospital was hit by a surprise moving out of the head of the institution at a short notice. Although a setback, the team continued regardless in its fight against the pandemic.

Lessons learnt:

Last year through the pandemic has been one of great learnings. A total of 2700 new patients admitted, over 1700 discharges after recovery and 740 deaths, has been the task if put in numbers for the last 3 months. Although it surprised us by its novelty, rapidity of attack and severity, each day spent in fighting this war was of learning lessons and improving for the next day. As we felt fortunate of having overcome the initial wave, this year saw an unprecedented surge of cases with severity and numbers which were far beyond our expectations and planning. Having felt overwhelmed for a few days, we could strike back with added manpower, resources and fortitude that any team would be proud of. The team of MOs, nursing officers and ancillary staff came together with determination to fight this battle and it was left to the physicians to manage patients and help them recover. Many of those who had severe disease, succumbed to their illness, teaching us the importance of prevention above treatment, in this ruthless disease.

The road ahead:

As we get to the downward slide on the wave, it is likely to return to happier times. However, after being stung by the resurgence of the wave early this year, to get complacent would be foolish. With new variants emerging and the next wave expected to appear, it would be prudent to build up resources like more oxygen beds, stay prepared with plans in place to reopen the COVID zone in stages as and when cases reappear and remain cautious even as we return to non- COVID work.

We have a treasure house of learning material in the patients, we have successfully treated and discharged and it would be prudent to keep them under follow up for looking at post-covid lung disease and other systemic and psychological complications.

The interns and physicians in training during this period have lost out on learning about non-COVID issues, but have immensely benefitted from this pandemic in becoming better physicians. It will take some time and lot of effort to streamline their training back to the usual before they are ready to appear for their professional exams.

To learn lessons from these experiences and be wiser for the times ahead in general and COVID management in particular, is what I am looking forward to.