Trust the doctors, nurses, medical staff. Trust them as if our lives depend on it, because in the face of COVID-19, they do.
With a rare disease that shredded my lungs to pieces, I learned two lessons very early: Find doctors you trust and listen to them. When our lives hang in the balance, fear and desperation can lead us to deceive ourselves into believing that we will be the outliers free from complications. However, if that desperation, instead of facts, drives our decisions as a nation, COVID-19 will ravage our communities more than it already has. I implore you, cling to the advice of frontline medical teams.
Shortly after my birth, that blue tinge of oxygen deprivation set off alarms. Years later, we received a diagnosis of primary ciliary dyskinesia, a disorder characterized by chronic respiratory tract infections. One thing was clear: Saving my lungs would be a battle.
Fortunately, I have been treated at some of the best hospitals in the country, some of which are now desperately trying to contain COVID-19: UCSF, Penn, Stanford. My hospitals became a second home. I learned to incorporate treatments into birthdays, holidays and special occasions. Now, 29 years old, I have about 55% lung capacity and am on IV medications for another respiratory infection.
Even though my life has included countless hospitalizations and IVs, my doctors never asked me to live in a bubble. Rather my teams borrowed from groundbreaking research on cystic fibrosis, followed their guts and hunches (sometimes into the operating room), and scraped together cutting-edge treatment plans to allow me to embrace everything. When I remain committed to placing my life in their hands, they accomplish extraordinary things in return.
While I knew my lung function might eventually require drastic measures, I did not expect my disease to dictate my life now or like this. Days ahead of the social distancing mandate, my pulmonary specialist at Stanford told me to turn my world upside down.
So, I am working remotely and even isolating from my wife in our home. I postponed my sister’s baby shower, scrapped plans for my dad’s birthday, and will skip celebrating my 30th in April. I don’t make these sacrifices lightly, and it breaks my heart to ask this of loved ones. But when I push aside my gut reaction of indignation, I remember my doctors have kept me alive and thriving. I cannot afford to stop listening to them now.
Nor should anyone else stop listening to doctors — especially not now. Do not cede your life, or those of your loved ones, to politicians, to the economy or to desperate dreams disconnected from reality. The advice that will save our lives is from the doctors I have listened to my entire life — those physicians by patients’ bedsides, who cull every piece of information possible and are unwilling to compromise on patient health. They are across the country on the floors of every hospital. If we want to survive COVID-19, we must allow them to lead us through this public health crisis.
Ignore any notion from politicians that we can disregard the wisdom of our frontline workers. Find the doctors sleeping in tents to protect their families. Find the nurses with bruises across their faces from crimping their reused masks. Do it for your life. For your loved one’s life. For all our lives. Those health care providers are our hope.
Trust them, listen to them, and for everything good left in this world, get them the equipment they need. If we can do that, we just might survive.
Attorney Brooke McCarthy of Suisun City is a chronic lung disease patient navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.
