TWO YEARS OF COVID 19
It was in early March 2020 that I saw my first patient with Covid 19. We didn’t know it at the time, but that’s what he brought back from a ski trip in Colorado. According to our long-standing policy for sick patients, he wore a mask. I did not. He recovered and I didn’t get sick. Several days later the governor closed non-essential businesses. We stopped seeing routine patients and saw only those in urgent need until we could revamp our procedures to keep patients and staff as safe as possible. We eventually found a reliable lab which we continue to use to this day for Covid 19 testing. We scrambled to find personal protective equipment which was in short supply. Finding no face shields, I bought the last protective goggles at Home Depot. We started doing telemedicine visits to minimize patient’s time in the office. We had Sieglinde stay home until we could figure out how to reduce her risk at the office. As an aside, she is alive and well. There was another German Sieglinde, also a lover of dachshunds, who died several months ago. Several of our patients thought it was our Sieglinde and one couple even attended her funeral! As I said she is still with us and works for a few hours every day vetting prospective patients. In two years, all the staff and doctors have remained well, aside from the occasional cold. None has been infected with Covid 19 which I think is quite an achievement given the sick patients that we have seen and the hundreds of patients that we have swabbed at curbside. We have been immunized and boosted. We continue to wear masks in the office. This is still recommended in medical offices and hospitals. We can tell you from our experience that it works.
We have weathered medical misinformation, bogus tests and treatments and as the Sondheim song goes, “We’re Still Here.”
We just finished recarpeting and painting the office. We have a new social media management software, Campaign Sprout, which allows us to text appointment reminders and will enable us to send notices of blog postings as well as send more frequent newsletters.
Remember, you only need a 4th Covid vaccine if you are immunocompromised per the most recent guidelines. Now is a good time to travel. I never thought two years ago that I would be advising patients to travel between surges.
