A sauna envelops my mouth and nose. I remember the first few times I wore surgical masks – as a medical student on a surgery rotation – I worried about fainting from consistently inhaling the carbon dioxide I had just exhaled. At this point, the mask feels almost nonexistent, an extension of my face. The faces of my colleagues have become nonexistent, as well. A sea of eyes behind clear shields stare back at me throughout the day, and my new coworkers’ identities find basis in sounds and postures rather than in expressions.
The streets mimic the hospital now, and the faces of my neighbors have vanished. I want to wear a mask on the street, too, but I feel the need to just use a scarf as an example that the public should not hold onto the medical equipment we conserve at the hospital. The mask I use daily is the same one until it becomes too soiled for use. God knows what covers the outside of it: not just coronavirus but also every other virus and bacterium of my patients’ breaths. And I have to keep touching it day to day, doing my best to avoid contacting the outside – my face to the world.
The anxiety builds and washes in waves when I leave the hospital. Ironically, the hospital feels safer as I usually know which patients have which ailment, but people I pass on the street do not have diagnoses labeled under their names. These worries are unfounded, I tell myself, since most people succumbing to the virus are older. Most people. I remember hearing about another resident physician my exact age that has died one city away from here. The risk is rare, but it is real. The worry swells with that thought, but the statistics calm it. No patient is a statistic, though. This justifies the worry, and it floats in the front of my mind.
An endless cycle forms in my head – reasoning that there is no need to worry until I worry that I am not taking the virus seriously enough until the worry feels insurmountable until I realize my thoughts exaggerate and there is no need to worry and on and on and on…
Until it stops. I have a patient waiting on the other side of the door, and my job requires me to diagnose and treat her. I continue to breathe in the moist air I just exhaled as I walk into the room of a patient with a fever for whom I know I will send COVID-19 testing.
