00:00I lost a patient who was around my age, not on my shift, but we still lost him.
00:10And when I got to know about it, it was really frightening.
00:14And I had to deal with that fear that people my age are dying of the virus.
00:23And I'm there in the middle of all that.
00:27Every day, it was a bit frightening.
00:32My day doesn't work like your day probably because I work in shifts.
00:37We are shift workers, right?
00:39So because the department, the ICU was running for 24 hours straight,
00:45emergency medicine, the department runs for 24 hours straight.
00:49We work in shifts because you need people to be manning up the department throughout the day.
00:56So I work nights, I work evenings, I work mornings.
01:00Right now, currently in the ICU, we had four shifts.
01:03So the first shift started at 8 a.m. in the morning till 2 p.m.
01:07The second shift started at 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the night.
01:11The third shift started from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. in the night.
01:15And then the final shift of the day was from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. in the morning.
01:20So let's say if my shift was in the morning, I would get up at around 6.30, 6.45.
01:26I would do the regular thing.
01:32I would brush my teeth. I would go to the toilet.
01:35I would wash up. I would get ready.
01:38I would eat and I would leave for the hospital around 7.30, probably earlier.
01:44Because it's just nearby.
01:48Then I would get in. I would go on PPE.
01:56It would take some time. It would take anywhere from 20 minutes to 15 minutes to 30 minutes.
02:04It depends on how meticulous and careful you are. And you have to be.
02:07And then there are doors and you enter the ICU.
02:10And then in the ICU, in my hospital at least, we had all separate negative chambers,
02:17negative pressure rooms where we would keep the patient and then the common corridor.
02:22And we would go and check on each patient, how they are doing, if they are doing better than yesterday.
02:31If they are on ventilators, how are their pressures and how are the ventilator settings,
02:36if they are a little better or worse and then check their x-rays and all that stuff.
02:40And then there would be rounds. The senior consultants would come in.
02:45They would have a look. We would discuss what we thought.
02:49They would tell us what we can do and we would give them suggestions and all that.
02:57So it would take a long time. That would involve the whole day.
03:04There were a few patients who were on ventilator.
03:06There were a few patients who were not on ventilator but on other things which helped them to breathe.
03:16If the machine is working against a lot of resistance, it would require a lot of pressure to pump that air in.
03:23And that pressure itself can cause damage to your lungs and would make you worse.
03:30So we needed to check on those parameters every day, in every shift, every hour, every 15 minutes, every 30 minutes,
03:37depending upon the status of the patient.
03:39And we would check on those parameters and make sure they were under control so that we don't do further damage.
03:49We try to keep them comfortable, keep them alive and hope that their body can recover
03:58and mend itself so we can remove that breathing tube out of them and they can go back home.
04:08And we would try to keep ourselves busy because we were locked up inside.
04:12And sometimes, since the family members would not be able to enter that area, they would call up a lot.
04:22They would want to see their family member who is admitted in the ICU.
04:33They would want to see them, they would want to talk to them.
04:36So we would sometimes arrange a video call.
04:38We had a mobile device which would be there at all times.
04:44So usually, what they want to know is how they are doing.
04:51What they want to know is if they will get better.
04:56Sometimes we don't have that second answer.
05:00And sometimes if we have that answer, it's a disturbing answer.
05:06And we are told to not lie at times and we try not to.
05:16So you talk to them, you tell them what are your expectations, if they are improving or not,
05:28if you think that they would improve or not.
05:31And sometimes they just want to see how they are looking, how they are doing.
05:40So I would just randomly, after a call, click a picture and send them on WhatsApp.
05:44So all that was there.
05:48It would usually consume most of our shift.
05:52And we tried to do that because otherwise there was nothing to do.
05:56We would just sit there ideally and our brain would get at work and we were worried.
06:01We were all worried of getting ourselves the virus.
06:07So we tried to keep busy as much as possible.
06:11As soon as the next person enters, we just want to get away.
06:18But we can't.
06:22So we tell the next doctor about, the doctors give handover to the doctors,
06:30the nurses give handover to the nurses.
06:33We sort of move out, there's a separate door, we get out and then there's a separate room for doffing.
06:39We slowly unwrap ourselves, one by one.
06:45We clean our hands every time we touch something.
06:50It takes again some 30 minutes, 20-30 minutes.
06:54And then once that is done, we come out.
06:59There is a toilet, there is a shower area.
07:03So we use the loo if we have to, we go take a shower.
07:09And we change into a new pair of scrubs.
07:13You can't really do anything in the PPE.
07:16You can't drink, you can't eat.
07:21You need to doff, ideally take a shower, clean up.
07:28And then you can do all these things.
07:31So it would really not be feasible for us to be wasting PPEs like that when there was a deficiency.
07:38So we don and we stay in for six hours and we don't drink or eat or we don't do anything.
07:45I come back to the hotel, I take a shower again.
07:48So we are paranoid, right?
07:51Our paranoia is at its worst.
07:55I take a shower again, I wear a different set of clothes again.
08:02And then I eat something if I have to.
08:06And if I'm thirsty along the way, I drink a lot of water.
08:10And yeah, if I had a really bad day, I would watch something.
08:16I would just read something, I would listen to some music, I would sleep, something like that.
08:21And I stay in the room most of the time.
08:24I don't let anybody into the room.
08:26I mean, I get my food tray outside.
08:29I tell them to keep it outside and I take it in.
08:32I clean my hands and I remove everything I think would have been touched.
08:37And I clean my hands again and I eat.
08:40And I don't let people enter my room to clean it up as well.
08:46Because if I am infected, I don't want to give that to somebody else, let alone a poor hotel worker.
08:55To be away from your family for so long, I haven't really been able to sleep in the same room as my wife since March.
09:05I haven't seen my family, anybody since 20 days or so.
09:14I just chat with them, video call, things like that.
09:21You sort of learn to live with things, right?
09:24I mean, life will get on.
09:30I mean, you have to learn to live with it.
09:33Because it's there and it's going to be there.
09:36I can't stop being a doctor. I never will.
09:38I just love my job too much to stop being a doctor.
09:42I will have to face it.
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