Though I’m an oncologist and not an infectious disease expert I’m getting bombarded with questions about the pandemic.
Patients and staff are asking me and every one of my partners similar things, over and over:
How long until things go back to normal?
How much danger am I in?
Is it all going to be ok?
Though I’m supposed to have all the answers, I haven’t felt too sure of anything lately. It must show on my face, because recently one of my patients (a young woman living with incurable breast cancer) asked “how you doing there, doc?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” I said. “My regular routine is wrecked, I don’t feel as safe as I used to, and I don’t know what’s coming.”
“Welcome to my world,” she said, with a wry smile.
I suppose like everyone else in my privileged corner of the planet, where war is remote and epidemics are rare, I’ve been fooled into believing that the world is a safe place, that nature wants the best for us, and that we have control.
Somehow I’ve mistaken privilege for entitlement.
But the pandemic has stripped those illusions from me, just as cancer stripped them from my patient long ago. I’ve had to accept that there’s no such thing as safe – only safer. I’ve had to admit that I don’t have as much control as I’d like. And I’ve had to consider the very real possibility that I or someone I love might not survive.
And even if we and all our loved ones come through safely, somehow I doubt we can ever go back to the sleepy (and false) security of before. We may well divide our lives into distinct sections: “Before COVID” and “After COVID”, just as many patients have distinct lives before and after cancer.
And maybe we’re better off living without illusions of safety.
If life becomes more precarious, maybe it’ll also be more precious. Maybe in facing the truth of our mortality we’ll learn a deeper compassion for all survivors, everywhere – since every human breathing is a survivor of something. And if I’m spared, perhaps the me that comes after will have learned to live with more dignity and courage.
Maybe my patient will teach me.
