300 Days of Sunshine

We did it.  2020 is coming to a close.  It felt like an eternity, a rock bottom that kept getting deeper, with more unprecedented and unexpected hardships than we could ever imagine, but with a new year comes hope for new beginnings. 2020 brought fires, explosions, plane crashes, murders, riots, injustices, and more death than we can process.  My friends and family experienced a lot of grief and loss, isolation and loneliness, discouragement, setbacks, depression, relationship struggles, infertility, job losses, health scares, and a lot of uncertainty, but we found ways to support each other.  My family connected on FaceTime and Zoom (with more happy hours virtually than we've ever had in person).  We couldn't have social gatherings with friends, but we shared love through notes in the mail and gifts on front porches, and found creative ways to connect with our close pod.  (Hello wine walks and pastries in the park.)  Kids didn't get to experience muse...

Here we are in month ten of the pandemic, now in the midst of a second or third wave that is so much worse than the first.  After getting through the initial surge of the virus, then adhering to masking and social distancing and staying home all summer and fall, I naively thought that we had succeeded in flattening the curve locally, so this new surge took me and many other healthcare providers by surprise.  I watched our COVID unit expand by four more rooms, then another four, then another 12, until it took over an entire wing of the hospital.  Then I watched private rooms become double rooms as we went over capacity.  I watched our ICU fill up with patients from other states, from pueblos and reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, and from towns 200-300 miles away because all of the hospitals in closer proximity were already full.  I watched multiple code blues happening simultaneously, wondering where we would get another crash cart if another code broke out...