DETROIT – Thinking back on that night, in particular, it seems almost absurd that we talked about that first case in such detail, with millions more still to come.
We struggled in hospitals worldwide, and to give you an idea of the crater it’s left in many of us, Dr. Frank McGeorge talked to four of his colleagues in the Henry Ford Health System about their thoughts from their first patients through now.
“It was kind of like this unsettling umbrella of just absolute fear,” said Jen Walny. “Kind of came over the unit.”
Walny is an ICU nurse at Henry Ford Macomb Hospital. She’s talking about the night they admitted their first patient with this new virus.
“I just remember overwhelming fear and just being terrified even to just go onto that side of the unit,” Walny said.
“When COVID first arrived, it was the fear of the unknown, the fear for our families and our friends,” said Roland Leal. “We went into this relatively blind we had never experienced anything like this, much less of this magnitude.”
Leal is a Respiratory Therapist at Henry Ford Wyandotte Hospital.
“During that first wave, the first time we had, I think we had six terminal weans all in one day, and our morgue can only hold five, and we didn’t know what to do, and the time that I looked out my office window and saw a refrigerator truck in the back that was to hold the extra bodies, I never will forget that; That really made it real to a lot of us when we saw that,” Leal said.
“I can still recall the first patient that I saw in the ICU at that time, and it was, it’s still something that doesn’t leave my mind because that patient did not end up making it, and you know we wracked our brains thinking, ‘did therapy have anything to do with that,’” said Mansi Patel.
Patel is an Occupational Therapist in the ICU at Henry Ford Hospital. She remembers the early days when there was so much that we didn’t know.
“Obviously, over time, we learned that it was the disease process, unfortunately,” said Patel.
“From patient one and being in the room with my first COVID patient and having a mask and gown and gloves and all these things on and not knowing for sure how sick this patient was going to end up being or how sick I could be if I wound up contracting this,” said Dr. Seth Krupp. “That was a very high level of anxiety.”
Doctor Krupp is the Vice-Chair of Operations in the Emergency Department at Henry Ford Hospital.
“It was just a constant stressor of figuring out all these unknowns and dimensions that we hadn’t even had to really frankly consider with anything else we’ve faced before,” Krupp said.
But every one of us faced it, and it brought out our best.
“I had one patient during the first wave where we worked so hard all night long just to get him through to the morning so that his wife could say goodbye via an iPad while we held his hand,” Walny said.
“In that first wave, several people did develop COVID, but to their credit, as soon as they were healthy and felt well enough, they returned, and they jumped right back in to help their brothers and sisters in arms cause that’s what it was during that time,” Leal said.
“Even when it was very dark back in 2020, the sense of just being together and united with the community but also with other healthcare providers, you know we’ve got this, and we’ll move forward,” Patel said.
“I will say one good thing that COVID kind of did is that it brought all of myself and all of my coworkers together,” Walny said.
“I think that was also part of our satisfaction in this, is that this is what we signed up to do,” Krupp said.
Everyone hopes we will be entering a calmer period, but of course, no one knows for sure. Either way, two years later, we all feel more prepared to handle whatever comes our way.
