I touched a patient’s mom the other day. I gave her an affectionate pat on the shoulder because we had given her even more bad news about her son. It is something I have done hundreds of times to hundreds of patients and their parents. It lets them know that I am here, I am thinking about them, and I am willing to sit with them through their trauma and sadness and fear.
Just a simple touch can signify so many things. But this touch was laden with something else as well: guilt. In the age of COVID-19, personal contact can be deadly. We wear masks and goggles in every patient room and limit contact to only that which is necessary. We test all of the patients who are admitted in my hospital, but we have no idea if their parents or even our colleagues or ourselves have been exposed. So we do our best to keep our distance to keep everyone safe.
But I worry what will happen as we come out of this. The only human contact I had had in two months (until yesterday when I saw my husband for the first time in 12 weeks) was with my patients. The first hug I received was from my husband yesterday. It was such a great feeling to melt into his arms. But it is also hard to reconcile that impulse to touch with our need to slow the spread of disease.
Kristen Radtke illustrates this concept beautifully in a graphic essay from March in the New York Times entitled “What Do We Lose When We Stop Touching Each Other?” In it, she describes the fundamentally human desire, nay the need, to touch one another, the health benefits it brings, and how that might be altered after this pandemic. I hope it gives you something to think about.
The prompt for this week is this:
“Write about touch.”
You have as much or as little time as you would like to take. See you next week.
References:
- Radtke K. (2020). Op-Art: What Do We Lose When We Stop Touching Each Other?. [online] The New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/opinion/coronavirus-touching.html [Accessed 23 May 2020].
More unedited writing of mine to remind you that writing doesn’t have to be perfect, it just helps you express what you feel. Ten minutes all about touch.
When I leave the house, I noticed everything that comes into contact with my bare skin and the sequence in which it happens. I close my door with my clean hands, now dirty because they have touched the doorknob on the outside of my apartment. I put the dirty keys back into the pocket of my bag, where they hopefully stay isolated in their compartment. My hands stay in my pockets as I push the door of my apartment building open with my hips. The walk button to cross the street to the hospital, I press with my elbow to minimize skin to metal contact. I am realizing that I should probably wash my hospital-issued fleece more than once every four days with my scrubs, but it is also showing signs of wear from all of the cleaning cycles it has already been through. As I approach the hospital, I reach into a brown paper bag that I keep in my tote for my hospital-issued surgical mask that I brought home yesterday. I hope that any viral particulates that had been left on it from the day before have since died, but who really knows? I put it on my face to enter the building, thanking the heavens for automatic doors.
Once inside, I grab a fresh mask from the staff working at the entrance and hold it in my now dirty hands. Why didn’t I remember to sanitize before accepting it? Then, holding my tote, my lunch box, and my new mask, I use my ID to tap the badge reader and push open the door, again with my elbow. I have yet to master the art of pressing the elevator buttons with my elbow, so I hope the first elevator that arrives is going up. More automatic doors, then more badge readers. I dangle my new mask off of my fifth finger, so I can sanitize my hands again before touching the door handle to our work room.
As I walk in the room, I turn on the lights, quickly dirtying my sanitized hands again. The bags go on an empty chair and with no one else in the room, I switch out my old mask for my new one. Now grabbing gloves and a bleach wipe, I sanitize down my workstation, trying not to gag at the smell of the cleaning solution. As I wait for it to dry, I print out patient lists for my team, set up my materials for the day and get to work. I don’t know how much I prevented the spread of disease (I am glad the mask does something), but I am ready to start another day.
Writing for Wellness 