Like she literally pulled up to the ER and he went in and she has never seen him again. And if he died, she would never see him alive again. And that is … the greatest tragedy.
There’s going to be so much tragedy from this, right, we’re going to lose so much life. We’re going to lose the life of people on the frontlines, our first responders, physicians and nurses, and we’re going to lose people who are young. But among all that other tragedy is going to be that hundreds of thousands, or millions of people, before this over, will die alone. And in many cases these patients are not even attended by a physician when they are dying.
You have a phone call with them from outside the room. You only go in the room if you need to lay hands on the patient to do a procedure or something.
These people are going into the hospital, they walk into the ER. They are coughing or something and they don’t know, they don’t realize - I didn’t even realize - I mean I realized but I didn’t think of it. I knew that if he went in there that he would immediately be put into a room as a person under investigation but I didn’t think.
It happened so fast that I didn’t say ‘tell him you love him’, like spend 10 minutes in the car with him before you send him in. Like you’ve been living with him for weeks you’ve been exposed, take 10 minutes he’s not critically ill, take 10 minutes and talk to each other. Say what you need to say, tell him the logistic stuff, like whatever you need to do, do it. And I didn’t think to do that and I’m a physician. Like I knew that these people were being isolated and it didn’t occur to me. But somebody who doesn’t realize that, they drive their family member up to ER and that’s it. The people who die, they will never lay eyes on them again.
