IT Blog

Tall and thin, wearing blue jeans, the patient walked past me in the emergency department. Wearing a surgical mask, he walked behind the triage nurse following her to the patient room and got hooked up to the heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen monitor. When I entered, rolling a cart with an ultrasound machine the size of a laptop, I heard the fast beeping accompanying the rate of his heartbeat. I was wearing the uniform that’s become standard in the last two months: the awkward set of equipment and garments that people have come to know as PPE (personal protective equipment). Bouffant hat, light-blue plastic gown wrapped and tied at the waist, oversized goggles, an aqua-green N-95 mask which was driving me nuts by chafing against the bridge of my nose, and purple gloves—size small.

He was one of my first COVID-19 patients. He had a fever and a normal oxygen level, telling me that he’d been sick with no appetite and just tired and weak. He…