This episode is the first of what will be an ongoing collection (The Now Times) of stories about people’s experiences during the pandemic. This collection aims to go further than the five-minute news segments or sound bytes that we get in mainstream media about COVID. The story that’s being told here is one that digs a little more deeply into each guest's feelings and thoughts.
The guest of this episode is an ICU resident, who is in training to become a critical care physician. He's been at the frontlines of the pandemic since Spring 2020 and has asked to remain anonymous. I've given him a pseudonym (Ian), and Ian shares what it's like to still be in training and having to deal with a massive pandemic. Ian’s story wasn’t what I had expected to hear. From the get-go, he told me that he keeps his work and emotions separate, and he maintained this position. However, there were times where I wondered during the interview if Ian’s story was as clear cut as he said it was. He starts to talk about the challenges of working with the families of dying patients, how he’s told his own fiancé to let him die should he ever get as sick as his ICU patients, he questions whether he’s really saving people--including the patients technically recover from COVID. At the end of the day, or in the years after the pandemic when he's finally had time to process all that's happened, it’s Ian himself who will know the answer.