'I Couldn't Do Anything': The Virus and an E.R. Doctor's Suicide

[OhioChick]

July 11, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

On an afternoon in early April, while New York City was in the throes of what would be the deadliest days of the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Lorna M. Breen found herself alone in the still of her apartment in Manhattan.

She picked up her phone and dialed her younger sister, Jennifer Feist.

The two were just 22 months apart and had the kind of bond that comes from growing up sharing a bedroom and wearing matching outfits. Ms. Feist, a lawyer in Charlottesville, Va., was accustomed to hearing from her sister nearly every day.

Lately, their conversations had been bleak.

Dr. Breen worked at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in Upper Manhattan, where she supervised the emergency department. The unit had become a brutal battleground, with supplies depleting at a distressing rate and doctors and nurses falling ill. The waiting room was perpetually overcrowded. The sick were dying unnoticed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/nyregion/lorna-breen-suicide-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

[chia]

1. So profoundly sad :(

[OhioChick]

2. My kids know several colleagues that have died from the virus.....

Have committed suicide or have PTSD.

People don't realize that we only have so many doctors able to care for patients.

If doctors start dropping like flies, who will care for us?

[chia]

4. The article echoed what I've heard from other healthcare workers: the pain and shock of not being

able to save their patients. In this country. In this modern era. Heartbreaking.

My deepest thanks to your kids and their colleagues, they truly are the heroes we need and often don't deserve. Can't believe how many videos of anti-maskers show them as middle-aged and older, I wonder how many of them will end up Covid patients.

[OhioChick]

5. Thank you....

All of these anti-maskers should have to waive medical treatment.
Give that vent to someone who cared about the safety of others but came down with the virus anyway.

They're putting healthcare staff at risk, their own families and all of us.

[Delphinus]

8. Yes.

Agree 100%.

[FM123]

9. I have often thought the same thing

[UpInArms]

3. This maladminstration has sooo much blood on its hands

Am so angry ....

Thank you for posting this story, my friend ... have been missing you

[OhioChick]

6. I've missed you, as well.....

I just don't know what to say anymore........

Life is bleak.

[Mike 03]

7. Devastating

[Hugin]

10. Correction:

"... what would be the deadliest days until now of the coronavirus pandemic."

My profound sympathies to Dr Breen, her family, her patients, and her loved ones.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. It's a dirty secret of the profession that there's a mental health stigma for doctors even in the

best of times. Med schools would do well to change their curriculum and even the mission of what it means to be a doctor to incorporate a more humane understanding of what "healing" might be and how it will always have limits, among other things.

[Collimator]

12. I haven't followed the link

to the complete story. I am not sure that it would be wise for me to do so right now.

A few years ago, I was working for my state's health exchange. My actual employer was a private company that had a contract with my state.

My job was to help people sign up for either Medicaid or a Qualified Health Plan. . . The ideal goal was to get people off the phone as quickly as possible, but I was very bad at that part.

People called in while going through a great many crises. The only real function of people in my position was to give them information or to assist in filling out the applications. Once completed, the applications sat in a data bundle waiting to be passed along to the appropriate insurance provider. People at my job level had no power whatsoever to move packets of data from our system to Medicaid's computer banks or that of any private insurer.

Listening to a young mother calling to ask about her Medicaid application because her 6 day old son had a heart condition and the specialist would not see him until the child was listed on Medicaid's rolls was devastating. The young woman went from sounding anxious, but controlled to whimpering as she got off the phone. After confirming that her application was on file and assuring her that the coverage would be backed dated to the beginning of the month there was not one single useful function that I could provide to her.

Various supervisor-types told me to repeat the same basic phrase to encourage her to end the call. That was the job.

Months before that call, another-- older-- mother, had lost her grown daughter suddenly. She sobbed through most of the call and spent the rest of it apologizing for her lack of poise. I did what I could to restore her sense of dignity. The call took too long, of course, and pulled down my metrics.

Another call involved a woman whose relatively young husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. All the information in their application indicated a well-employed set of parents in a comfortable household with a few children. The husband was let go from his company a few months into his health crisis. Because the family's income was decimated, they were "fortunately" eligible for Medicaid.

These are just a few of the scenarios that I encountered in my job. I also dealt with a lot of difficult, unlikable people who fumed at me over the phone because their recent $.50 an hour pay raise put them just over the state's declared poverty level and negated their Medicaid eligibility. During much of this time, I was making just over $13 an hour myself and paying $50 a month for medical insurance coverage that had a $1500 deductible.

At this point, I am not longer sure why I am writing any of this. It's probably just to provide another angle on the view that our health care system in this country is, itself, sick. The people who run it probably wouldn't mind a surge of suicides to clear the rolls of people who--in their minds--pull down the profit margins.

[JudyM]

17. Universal healthcare. That is all. It is only greedy bureaucracy that stands in the way of that.

IMHO.

Thank you for your human goodness. It was not lost.

[SharonClark]

13. I wonder if my trump-voting ER nurse neighbor has changed her mind?

Or my trump-voting-Obama-hating niece-in-law has changed her mind. She's an MD.

Not all doctors are impacted and many of the rest are as clueless and selfish as ever.

[OhioChick]

14. If they haven't changed their minds, they're fools....

You're right, not all doctors are impacted and they're the ones yelling to open up the States.
They're usually in specialties. When States lock down and elective surgeries are put on hold, they lose money.
Those on the front line are getting pay cuts, facing a lack of PPE and many want States to lock down.

[XanaDUer2]

15. I read thirds article this morning

Dr. Breen was a super overachiever whose brain just seem to have broken...she was under a lot of stress and had the idea she "embarrassed " herself for being hospitalized and fearful her career was over. This was a heartbreaking article to read and it will stick with me a long time.

[Skittles]

16. we have no leadership

and it is literally killing people

[Nevilledog]

18. It's criminal the propaganda the trump admin is spewing

Trump Health Secretary Says US Healthcare Workers 'Don't Get Infected' With Covid-19 (94,000 Have Contracted the Virus)


https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/08/trump-health-secretary-says-us-healthcare-workers-dont-get-infected-covid-19-94000