Every time a patient improves, it's a huge morale boost to the entire team

Voices of the Pandemic features people in the Seattle area who are on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak.

Dr. Mike Holmes is an anesthesiologist who works in critical care for US Anesthesia Partners at Swedish hospitals.

Before the shift

Right now I’m starting a shift at Swedish Issaquah. I’m sitting in the parking lot and about to go in, and probably expect to see somewhere between seven and 10 patients in the intensive care unit who are critically ill with the disease (Covid-19), and then there'll be a couple other folks who have other things as well.

The shift last night was interesting.

The thing that struck me was how we get so focused on this pandemic going around right now that it's really easy for people who have other chronic diseases to fall through the cracks.

We had one patient, and she had a type of cancer. It had gone throughout her body. She came in with a whole bunch of complications associated with that, that had been getting pretty bad over the past few days.

But she never was able to make it in before because of the pandemic. Basically she's at the point where she's pretty much at the end of her life and there's very little we can do for her, and her family can even be with her because nobody else can be in the hospital right now.

It's a pretty terrible thing to be trying to talk to family over the phone and explain to them just how bad everything is when they can't be with their loved one.

So I'm just outside the hospital right now, about to go in. I’m putting on shoes in the parking lot because I'm trying not to ever track them inside my house. Right now I'm just walking up to the hospital entrance. I’ll be going through a checkpoint in just a minute here.

A greeter asks if Dr. Holmes has any cough, fever or shortness of breath. They check who he is and if he has a mask and then let him proceed.

After the shift

I’m just finishing up another shift here at Swedish Issaquah. Lots of sick patients with Covid-19, but overall I'd say it was encouraging.

We’ve got a lot of people who are starting to get better. A lot are still on ventilators, and it’s not clear exactly how things are going go, but I'm hopeful that we can get some of them off and hopefully back to normal life someday. Anyway, it's time to go home, go to sleep and do it all again tonight.

At home

I'm sitting in my backyard right now in between shifts. Keeping the virus out of home is something that I think of quite a bit. My wife is 24 weeks pregnant.

We've been staying farther apart from each other than we normally do, sleeping in separate bedrooms, using separate bathrooms. How much of any of that will make a difference? I don't know.

In terms of how the mood has changed around the hospital, I think at first there was a lot of fear. Most of these patients end up intubated for at least a week to two weeks, if not more. So it took a little while to start seeing our patients improving. Every time we have a patient get off of that later, or even better go home, it's a huge morale boost to the entire team.

We're collecting short, first person stories for our series Voices of the Pandemic. We'd love to hear about a moment or decision you faced recently, maybe something that shows how you're experiencing this crisis. Reach reporter Kate Walters via email at kateo@kuow.org.

Producer Alec Cowan composed music for the radio story.