Yesterday I left work early and went home sick, for probably the second time in 2 years. Today my husband works, so the children and I have stayed home from church, rather than infect others there.
I had been thinking about this blog, thinking about writing about the trip to South Korea 5 months ago. But the news these days is bad. My Chinese friend tells me COVID-19 has spread all across her birth nation, and everyone is holed up in their own houses, terrified of going out. Her father is there, hiding, as supplies dwindle. I read about one of the selfless doctors who first identified it, who fought it to his death, and I confess I cried. Not just for him, but for all who are fighting back.
I know what it is like to take care of patients with too few resources, to be frustrated by the need of the person in front of you. When you do not have enough for everyone. When you know too many possibilities with no ability to act on any of them.
No one continues working in those conditions without love. Generally speaking, healthcare is too strenuous a field to even complete the training without love. Greed or pride–I don’t think these can sustain a person through sleepless nights, endless paperwork, or the mundane selfishness of the average patient with a head cold. Either you care, or you look for different work.
Right now in China, my comrades in white coats are frightened and exhausted. Yesterday, my partner ignored my texts and came in on her day off. She said I had no business making medical decisions while sick. And while I protested that I hadn’t fallen over yet, and the patients hadn’t noticed, she was right. Our numbers are too high to continue pretending that the room didn’t spin around me when I tilted my head to make notes, or find myself staring at the chart instead of sending out prescriptions, with no idea how much time had passed. I was grateful she sent me home, even if I hadn’t made any mistakes. Yet. Because the more tired you are, the more likely it is to err more than a fall on your face.
Do they have enough doctors in China to avoid this? In my own clinic we’ve struggled with this for months, lacking backup. The more tired you are, the less help or resources you have, the easier it is to fall ill yourself. And when there is no one to send you home, you work anyway.
It’s all very well to build new hospitals and wards, and house hundreds of patients. But someone must care for them there.
All of this hurts my heart. And in the last couple days, South Korea–beautiful, painful South Korea–has hundreds of cases overnight. Rumors fly in the news: will South Korea become the next epicenter of this virus? How many will die? Will the economy collapse?
I don’t know. But I wish I could help.
A couple years ago, when I was still trying to rejoin the military and North Korea was threatening again, I asked my husband a question. If it came to the North attacking the South, would he let me go? It would be chaos and desolation, and nuclear waste, he said. Everything you loved about South Korea from shows and music would be gone. But they would need me, I said. That’s when they would need someone like me most. So would you be okay if I volunteered to go? He sighed. I would expect you to, he said. (And this, dear void, is why I love him.)
I’m not in the military. Despite years of studying, my Korean is knotted and awkward. And if I learned anything from my trip, it is that I am nothing and nobody there, my only leverage is the English I wished they would stop speaking to me. My nearly ten years of medical practice is invisible and I am only a 하얀 머리 있는 외국인 아줌마. I will never be 우리.
Love isn’t rational.
My husband perhaps gave me the answer now when we discussed the ATA Korea Trip last year. “If you can go, you should,” he said. So I guess I watch. Wait. Keep praying.
Elemental Orison 