The Hospitalist On November 28, 2021, scrolling through Twitter, I came across a tweet by @SailingKateMD: “Checked my ICU list after being gone for a few days for the holiday…Every single one of my COVID-19 patients died while I was gone. All of them.”1
It was my third year as an attending hospitalist. The world was moving on from the still-deadly pandemic, while we continued to struggle with waves of COVID-19 patients. We had new treatments, and vaccines were on the horizon, so we felt slightly less helpless, but I was still seeing more death than I ever had before.
As I read that tweet, I heard the voices of families saying goodbye to their loved ones, felt the deep impressions of the N95 mask on my face, and saw patients dying in their beds. Heartbreakingly, I saw the social media posts pretending it wasn’t happening.