How long is “now”… 🦠 COVID 🦠

We saw it in the news. That was terrifying we thought when it became an epidemic in Wuhan, China. Creeping and crawling it continued to spread with unbreakable fluidity to corners otherwise unreachable.

It did get here in the US too eventually becoming a full fledged pandemic!

I felt for the first time in my life ever so far, driving past the empty school zone at the usually swamped hour of the morning, getting to work in no time, what a soldier’s heart would feel like going to the battle field, as I was wearing my isolation gear, covering my whole self up, not an inch exposed, over the layers of my clothes and my white coat, preparing my physical self, for my first couple of suspected COVID-19 patients..

But, for the first time, as if I could feel the life of a daughter, a wife, a sister, a mother not well covered beneath those layers, but clearly outside my protective equipment, exposed to the enemy I came to work to fight with. My nemesis I went to the battle front to attack, but didn’t know how to, as it couldn’t be seen.

It has stayed invisible, though its lethal presence is felt by each one of us the same. We aren’t able to see it, but the enormous morbidity and mortality it’s causing tirelessly cannot be not seen!

A long-awaited as if vacation came just like that for the kids, but not the kind we’d even ever imagined, with no where to go to, nothing to do and with their parents at work.. the busyness partially as if came to a sudden stop with no longer need for preparing and packing their lunches or helping with their projects or rushing to dance classes, or ice skating, soccer or swimming or violin lessons, or squeezing our weekend restaurant family dates to try out different cuisines..

The silence and the smoothness of the roads, so deafeningly loud ironically, in the morning, where the traffic otherwise used to be bumper to bumper.. that school zone without children or those 30 minute long lines where 5 different police cars used to be parked directing us all in different ways, or the malls or supermarkets without having any parking space otherwise, now without anyone to sell or buy.. is just a bit of how noxious COVID 19 is!

The busier, louder, crazier stuff was all frustrating at times, even time consuming, but hell..

I await that chaos, that craziness called life again!

Guilty though I feel I am for quite a few other reasons.. More than all, that I’m unable to determine what it means when I say no to them for Disney, our planned Europe trip for spring break, a movie or a play date, a birthday party for now to my kids, or that I can’t answer them when their schools would reopen, do even I know what I mean by “now”..

Certain is nothing but the uncertainty, as I myself can’t define the duration of “now”.. But I’ll continue to go to that battlefront to fight for all of us, for my community, my people, protecting that doctor’s body, keeping that doctor’s mind open, eager to learn anything more at all, but keeping at stake the Mama physically and emotionally, awaiting “now” to be over soon..

Pallavi Aneja MD