Nobody asked me…

I have sacrificed for you. My body. There is a persistent rash on my right chin, red and rubbed raw from 14 hour days in scratchy masks under fluorescent lights. My nose, and the noses of my colleagues, have been squished, pushed, bent, and infected by the augmented gas masks in which we sometimes fight battles. 

My mind. It used to think of change and kindness and the complexities of life and the mysteries of love. It used to plan trips to faraway places or into the arms of friends and family. It used to dream up big plans for my community, big picture ideas for a better world, hilarious jokes for my always postponed stand up comedy debut. Now my mind thinks about how many ICU beds we need and don’t have. It imagines standing in the trauma bay, choosing between sick people, trying to decide who gets the breathing tube. It wonders who will take care of the people of New Mexico when all of the otolaryngologists fall ill. 

My spirit. I’m tired. Sometimes I can’t get up off the couch during my 12 hours off. Sometimes I can’t get off the couch after a full weekend off. I haven’t seen most of my family in almost a year. I try to find joy in simple things but it’s exhausting. I try to stay positive. I project strength, if not for myself and my team, but for my anxious parents hundreds of miles away. I am defeated by my family and friends who use Facebook as a soapbox to complain about ordering food with their drinks at bars. I worry about my patients, most of whom exist in worlds ravaged by cruelty and contempt, their trauma relegated to history and ignored. It comes in waves. I can usually pull myself together. But it’s hard. 

And yet my sacrifice is nothing. I spend my day, in that scratchy mask, taking care of vulnerable people. The fifty-year old father of three whose kids don’t understand why he won’t just come home. He has a breathing tube in his neck. The social worker noted in the chart that his kids were angry that he had left them. The old Native American woman, who only speaks Navajo, who was here in this place long before we were, who sits alone in her ICU room on a ventilator. We pushed them out of their land, we left them with no water, and here she sits, the victim of a modern day smallpox blanket brought back to her community from a basketball game. Who cares if it was by accident? The three-year-old girl with post viral paralysis, who lost her parents and the use of her legs to COVID. This is not the flu. My sacrifice is nothing. I am not suffering. 

I’m grateful. For my exhausted and overextended support system. For my parents who send me care packages. For Zoom dinners and online games. For books to escape into. For the catharsis of my words. For the privilege of working on the front lines, holding the hands of panicked patients, using my knowledge to fight disease, for the honor of ministering to the sick and caring for people who need me. I signed up for this. I’m thankful for the opportunity to live up to my oath. I happily serve others, even when it makes me scream or cry or collapse in exhaustion. And I appreciate the sacrifices of my community, wearing masks, finding creative new ways to safely run their businesses, checking on their neighbors, rising to the challenge of a national crisis to showcase our incredible capacity for empathy and collaboration.

I’m also incredibly angry. Because of those who flagrantly disregard that incredible capacity and instead fall into the easy trap of selfish pity. Because the NBA has rapid COVID tests and my team does not. Because people won’t wear their fucking masks for five minutes. Because some of our patients lie on their screening questionnaires and refuse to wait a few months for their elective nose job. Because the city of Madison, WI had the audacity to recommend that its homeless population seek shelter from the surge, as if all that had prevented them from doing so was their lack of instructions. Because members of my own family apparently care more about a dead turkey than they do about me. Because this country cares more about a false sense of freedom than it does about the suffering of our neighbors. 

Look around you. If you see a house and family and food, you are not suffering. If you do not see nurses and tubes and beeping machines, you are not suffering. If your biggest concern is how big of a party you can have on Thanksgiving, you are not suffering. The irony of watching Native Americans die at twice the rate of the rest of the country, while we squabble over the size of our commemorative feast, is overwhelming. 

This is true freedom: you have a choice. You can throw a hissy fit about this or you can rise to the occasion. Remember the rubber drives of your grandparents? Remember their victory gardens? Remember how they volunteered for the USO? This is a war and you have the freedom to choose. Will you play your part and end the suffering of others or complain that their suffering inconveniences you? Will your time of thanksgiving be about gratitude and giving or feasting and fighting? No one is taking the responsibility of freedom from you. You have the choice, with all of its gravity. You have to choose.

by Pete Railand
from justseeds.org