I’ve worked as a doctor in eight states fighting Covid-19. What keeps us going?

I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re all tired — I know. I feel it in my bones. I have been in 8 states caring for thousands of patients with Covid-19. I have worked in coast to coast, north to south, in New York, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, California, and my home state of Colorado. I have treated the rich, poor, White, Black, immigrants, Native Americans, BIPOCs, anyone and everyone who needs care. It’s my job as an emergency medicine physician. When a surge is happening, I pick up, leave my family, and run into the flames.

I am still running. As I write this, I am sitting in the ICU at Kaiser Permanente Ontario Medical Center, in Ontario, California. This hospital is in a community that has been hit hard by the coronavirus. I hopped on a plane from Colorado to help my colleagues here, an ER doctor working in an ICU that has been overwhelmed beyond its typical capacity by Covid-19 patients. Parts of the hospital having to be converted into ICU beds. That’s something I have seen all over the country during my travels.

For those who don’t know, ER doctors don’t normally work in the ICU. There are so many critically ill, complex Covid-19 patients that ICU doctors need help. When my employer asked if any of us would be willing and able to travel to overwhelmed hospitals in other states, a lot of us working ICU and ER jumped up at the chance to volunteer our help. We knew they would do it for us. It’s all hands on deck to help out. So here I am, catching the first flight out, running into the fire.

But as I chat with my colleagues, I am not alone in how I feel: We are in the midst of a sustained mass casualty event. We worked on adrenaline and goodwill through the first surges because, we thought, if we can just power through it, it will soon be all over. But just as we looked up thinking the end was near, another wave of virus hits and the bodies start to pile up — literally — in our hospitals.

All over the country, these conversations are eerily the same. But I am still not numb to being the last voice a person hears before they go on a ventilator. Or to holding a phone up to a patient because it’s the only way a wife can see her dying husband before he passes since no one else is allowed in the room.

I can’t forget the sound of the monitor beeping when I lose a pulse after having tried to keep someone’s parent alive all day. It doesn’t get any easier for me to call a family and tell their two little girls that Momma isn’t going to come home again. It doesn’t get any less sad when I do my best, but it’s still not enough. I don’t get any less frustrated when I realize that despite every warning I have given to my friends and my family, they are still going to get together and celebrate a birthday party because they are all invincible … until they aren’t.

But now it is one year later. 12 months. 365 days. 525,600 minutes. And it seems like things may be better, like the country is beginning to go back to “normal.” Theme parks opening up. Masks no longer required. Schools reopening and restaurants increasing capacity.

But what happens if the people who are supposed to be there to care for you aren’t there? What happens when the next wave of virus hits, and those of us meant to care for the sick are too exhausted to be there? What if your frontline health care workers are shellshocked, exhausted, and out of adrenaline and goodwill? What happens then?

I will fight on. I will wake up and leave my husband and young children again. I’ll risk my life to help save yours. And I will because I feel compelled to do it. But I am getting tired. My patience is getting thinner when I go outside and see life going back to normal. I see governors ending mask mandates as if the pandemic was over, allowing everything to reopen with no restrictions while I still have friends and colleagues working Covid-19 as travel nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists in those same states. I start to get frustrated.

I ask myself: Why do I keep doing this? Why am I still here running into the fire? On the front lines? Because I must truly believe, if we all are willing to fight just a little bit harder for a little bit longer that we can beat this together.

But I have to know — and other frontline workers like me — that you are in this fight with us. Wearing your mask. Getting your vaccine. Doing your part. Because every person’s actions matter if we’re going to win this fight.