‘My COVID-19’.
Over 122,000 people in Massachusetts have had confirmed cases of COVID-19. Among them is Sondra Crosby, associate professor of health law, ethics & human rights at the School of Public Health.
In a new essay published in Annals of Internal Medicine, Crosby, who is also an associate professor at the School of Medicine and a physician at Boston Medical Center, shares her experience treating COVID-19 patients, contracting the coronavirus herself, and the drawn-out illness and long recovery that followed.
In March, Crosby writes, “I returned to a surreal environment in general internal medicine, working several sessions in the newly created ‘influenza-like illness’ clinic screening for COVID-19 after learning to don and doff full PPE.”
Two days before she was set to have a break, “I felt a sudden, unexplainable fatigue—nothing else,” she writes.
But that fatigue quickly turned into a brutal array of physical symptoms, as well as confusion and even delirium. As she spent weeks in bed, Crosby writes that she was also haunted by “dreams and visions of my inpatient service: scores of dead COVID-19 patients being taken down the utility elevator to the morgue and the seemingly nonstop overhead pages of ‘rapid response team and code blue.’ My mind replayed colleagues describing the agonizing and isolating deaths of so many patients.”
Months later, Crosby is still recovering, steadily but slowly. “I don’t know when or if I will recover my pre–COVID-19 state of health, but I remain optimistic,” she writes.
“Like so many others, I am forging a path forward as a human and a healer who has been profoundly impacted by a pandemic in a world that will never be the same, keeping my eyes on the horizon.”
Read the full essay in Annals of Internal Medicine here.