The Sound of Silence

I go to work in A&E expecting the crush of winter, an everyday struggle to see patients, to move them on and beat the targets that have terrorised A&E since the Tony Blair administration of the 1990s.

Now I see silence.

A department that is barely full, a department where I wait for patients when they used to wait for me.

To some extent, this is a good thing. Without the pressure of time, we can see the sickest patients as soon as they present to us. After all, urosepsis and bowel obstructions care not for newfangled viruses. Plus, on a selfish level, I can relax a bit without worrying about multiple patients at a time. I’m glad I am not on ITU, a specialty expanding throughout multiple hospitals nationwide due to the severity of many COVID cases, where the steadily declining lack of PPE is being felt most acutely, and for every patient coming off a ventilator, two more come in needing its support.

I do wonder however about the people staying at home, the people who would otherwise come rushing in and are now thinking ‘let’s ride it out’. Many times, yes, they would have no need for treatment if they came in. But more often than not, simple symptoms mask sinister problems that we could have caught early, the cancers, the anginas that turn into full blown heart attacks. I wonder about the wave of co-morbidity that will follow after COVID, how many people are dying at home or are physically or psychologically unable to cope, the services that would once have helped them pared down.

An added uncertainty in a time full of them. We can only wait and see.