Sometimes I don’t know if I can handle another one. Another uncomfortable pause, another sudden shift in body language, another dance of “did you get the vaccine” and “no, it was too quick,” “no, I don’t know what’s in it,” “no, and I will not.”
I wish it were just a simple question and an answer – like all the other checklists in my patient visits. I can ask a patient about their home life, diet, drug use, and sex life and get an answer so nonchalant I have to double-check that they’re listening. But, the same person might nearly freeze when I ask about the vaccine. It’s almost as if I can see their spine straighten and their muscles tense, prepared for Battle with the Know-It-All Doctors (and their Students). Their walls come up and suddenly we are miles apart. That’s what I hate the most. Not even the uncomfortable conversations, but the sudden distance, the instant formality as if it is no longer two people speaking in a tiny room but instead, a hot-seat interview on a news channel.
This is not to say they are all the same, they are definitely not. There are those genuinely seeking information, truly torn between a desire for safety and a fear of complications unknown. There are those paralyzed not by their own fear, but their daughter or sister’s fears. There are those with bookmarked Facebook posts, ready to brandish a vaccine horror story like a knife. There are those who I wonder about the most. Those who strongly and firmly state “no” and offer no further engagement. Then, there are those who I feel like begging. The 34-year-old pregnant woman, the diabetic 65-year-old headed for dialysis, the elderly 83-year-old in the emergency department. With them, I walk the thin line between persuasion and disillusionment, hoping I don’t trigger the dreaded blank stare. I think of my unfortunate patients. The 31-year-old guy who was finally cleared to go home after a 60+ day hospital stay, only to suddenly pass away from hospital-acquired COVID 1 day before discharge. Sometimes, I refuse to walk the line at all and I simply move on.
Honestly, it all depends on the day. On good days I feel kind and patient, mindful that we all crave the same health and freedom. Other days, I am tired and frustrated. Tired of all the cracks in the system, like the fact that students aren’t supposed to see COVID positive patients yet I spent countless days in the ER listening to the lungs of patients incidentally found COVID positive 15 minutes later. Tired of spending my days as a medical student next to a doctor on a laptop telehealth visit instead of floating between exam rooms as my predecessors did. Tired of the relentless acne from wearing a mask for 8-12 hours daily. On these days, my brain reverts to its primitive schema mode and determines the status of each person: either With Us or Against Us. I know, I know that this is not the reality. I know that everyone supports healthcare workers and vaccine hesitancy is remarkably multifactorial. Still, compassion fatigue is real and it permeates hospital halls like its own disease.
I try to imagine what the vaccine is to them. Often, it seems impossible we are talking about the same thing. What is to them a dreaded and dangerous trap is to me a golden ticket, a precious shield in a chaotic war zone. It absorbed some of the helplessness that we were drowning in. It gave me a guiding light, a dream of an education unmarred by a new virus. The “truth” outside the politics, fear, and hopeful dreaming, probably lies somewhere in the middle. The vaccine is neither a magical cure-all nor a manufactured lie. It is just a little piece of nucleic acid that travels into cells to become a protein that WE HOPE MAKES A DIFFERENCE.
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**This piece was selected and performed at the inaugural Stethoscope Stage production in 2022**