Pete G. August 2020
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I'm a family doctor. My dad, who's 87, was recovering from a hip fracture when he tested positive for COVID-19 in the nursing home. He recovered relatively painlessly. However, because all the residents had to stay in their own rooms he had much less social interaction than he had before and certainly family couldn't visit. So he shut down emotionally and progressively became more and more vegetable like, with less and less responsiveness to other people. So we brought him home with hospice. He’s actually recovering, now that he has some more social stimulation and he's getting proper food and he's not so bored and life actually has a future.
I've also had a couple of patients who had COVID-19 die. One I feel incredibly guilty about because I put him on Zithromax and Hydroxychloroquine, the standard of care at the time and he was getting better….then he died at home.
Did he die of an arrhythmia because of the medicine I gave him? I don't know. I have spoken to his wife about it. She's like, “Pete, just give yourself a break, you did the right thing”.
I have to reconcile it and say, “I'm not a failure”, but there's that part of me that says, “yes you are”. I’m going to carry that with me forever.
