“As a black man, it was very difficult intubating and managing many people who looked and sounded like me”
Dr Olusegun Olusanya recalls caring for Covid-19 patients at the height of the pandemic.
The last month has been a real challenge.
I had very limited experience of severe acute respiratory failure, having only personally been involved in the care of a few patients during the H1N1 pandemic.
Seeing this many patients with such severe respiratory failure was exciting, humbling, and scary.
The virus took a toll on me in many forms.
As a clinician, it was hard. Patients were very sick, requiring multidisciplinary input – often quite rapidly. One occasion had me helping to deprone a patient only to watch them rapidly spiral into respiratory failure, necessitating a call to the consultant who placed them on VV ECMO.
Other occasions had me ringing family members in the early hours of the morning to inform them of the sad news of the impending death of their loved one.
Being removed from the humanising presence of patient’s relatives was very difficult for me. It was wonderful when families were able to send pictures of how their relatives normally looked, in the times BC (Before COVID).
As a black man, it was very difficult intubating and managing many people who looked and sounded like me. I have never ventilated as many West Africans in my entire life, as I had during this period.
I had sleepless nights, wondering if I or my family would be next, and what I would do about it.
As a husband, I had to watch my wife go grey with worry at the prospect of me walking into work every day, with a significant risk of catching a disease with a predilection for black people.
As a man, I did eventually succumb to COVID19, and had two weeks of thankfully mild illness. My wife nursed me to health, watching my respiratory effort like a hawk.
As a son with elderly parents in Nigeria, I pleaded with my family to maintain physical distancing and stay safe. They, in turn, worried themselves sick when I started showing symptoms.
As a friend and colleague, I sadly lost a former colleague, and heard the stories of my friends who lost theirs. It was heart breaking.
As a trainee, I suspended my Advanced Critical Care Echo logbook to focus on delivering excellent intensive care, the best way I knew how.
Now, as the peak slows, and we look forward to returning to some semblance of normality, I remain alert. Perhaps these are symptoms of hypervigilance from stress; more likely, I think, I am acutely aware of the possibility of a second peak.
I will take the lessons I have learned, and the experiences I have had, and allow them to make me a better human being, husband, and doctor.
Dr Olusegun Olusanya is a specialty trainee in intensive care medicine at Barts Heart Centre, St Bartholomew's Hospital.