How does someone come to terms with this reality?
By Jenée Desmond-Harris Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Consider how tough it is to think clearly or make big decisions when you're feeling under the weather. Now imagine being a Covid-19 survivor with permanent lung damage, and regaining full consciousness after months of sedation only to learn that you'll die if you don't receive a lung transplant. |
Imagine being asked to commit to the rehabilitation that will be required after the transplant, a process so intense that most patients are required to have a three-person support team. And imagine that unlike usual lung transplant candidates — people with progressive diseases like cystic fibrosis who have plenty of time to consider whether a transplant is right for them — you'll have to start making decisions and plans now. |
"How does someone who has never known what it is to have a chronic disease, whose only frame of reference is a healthy life before Covid-19, come to terms with this reality?" Daniela Lamas, a pulmonary and critical-care physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, asks in an essay today. |
"When I was in training just a few years ago, it would have been inconceivable to begin evaluating patients who had never before considered transplant and were deeply sedated in an intensive care unit, anguished family members making decisions on their behalf until they can wake up," she writes. "But that is what we are doing now." |
Lamas goes on to explore the complicated issues doctors will have to grapple with as they treat this new population of Covid-19 survivors who are left with lungs that are irrevocably scarred. Her perspective from inside the hospital is a reminder that even as many Americans are inoculated, both the suffering caused by the pandemic and the novel challenges facing medical professionals continue. |
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