Member-only story
I Am Not a Hero. I Am Scared.
Honesty from a doctor on the front lines
As a psychiatrist in training at a public hospital in New York City, I dealt with a lot of existential dread when I found out I was going to be deployed to treat patients with Covid.
Psychiatry is so far removed from the rest of clinical medicine, what with their blood tests and easily treatable conditions. I remember feeling like I was leaving medicine behind when I matched to a psychiatry residency, and again after I finished the medicine portion of my intern year. I applied to medical school to become a psychiatrist, so as I rotated through the other areas of the hospital, I never felt the sense of belonging in the clinical space that seemed to come so easily to the rest of my classmates.
So when this news came last month, I spent several hours just dreading the fact that I would have to go back to medicine, let alone the fact that I would be taking care of Covid patients.
Adding insult to injury, everyone keeps using the word “deployed.” I suspect this word is meant to instill a sense of duty and honor in the person to whom it is applied, almost coercing them into accepting their new reality, however horrible it may be. Unfortunately, there really is no better word for what most essential workers are facing. We have no choice, our lives are…
