When Corona Comes Knocking

Dr. Jay Kaplan is an Emergency Physician, Past President of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and Medical Director of Care Transformation at LCMC Health in New Orleans.  He wrote this poem after visiting an ICU where 6 patients had died of COVID-19 in one night. He told us: “The road will remain the road.  We need to… recognize and acknowledge our fear, sadness, grief, and perhaps anger and express it in a safe environment.”

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When Corona Comes Knocking

By Dr Jay Kaplan

Death has always been around us

            on a bad day we felt it seize a patient from our care

                        many good days we could feel victorious and look the other way

Now death is our greeter as we walk in to work

            sometimes we see it walk in the door

                        other times it is wheeled in

            sometimes death announces itself upfront

                        other times it’s more subtle giving us the hope of being able to defeat it

                        then crushing our dream with irreverent gusto

My friends

            my colleagues

I see your sadness through your goggles and masks and face shields

I sense your grief through your isolation gowns

I feel your fear even as you try to hide it

                       And I feel my sadness

my grief

and my fear

which I too try to conceal

We journey on

True soldiers of healing

this is rough terrain we’re in

and there are no foxholes to hide in

and no way to take cover

we have no tanks and no big guns and scant armor

Our only ammunition is our caring hands and our searching minds

            as we try to devise strategies for survival

                        of our patients

                        and ourselves

Reinforcements for our side are few

            And we know that our casualties will rise more than we could ever fathom

This time we have no magic bullets

So what to do

We can look into each other’s eyes and see our strength and determination

We can speak with hope and faith that we will get through this together

We can hug each other even if we are 6 feet apart

We can be grateful for and celebrate every battle won and take that in deeply

            and know that our actions have made a difference

We have been drafted without warning

And we are on the front lines fighting with every ounce of strength we have

Not knowing how long this fight will last

Victory must be redefined

if fewer people die than expected we will know we have done well

And if that doesn’t happen

we will take solace in having fought hard and given everything we could

We will find our way through this wilderland

We will guide others to the other side of this tragedy

We will know that we are a band of brothers and sisters connected forever

            by our spirit and our passion for helping others live