When COVID 19 hit home Vijay Gopichandran When the family members of a doctor providing care for patients with COVID 19 come down with COVID 19, some very fundamental changes start happening in the doctor’s life. I am writing a narrative of what happened to me, when my elderly parents both in their early seventies, came down with COVID 19 pneumonia one after another in a matter of a week. My hospital became a designated COVID 19 treatment centre in the latter half of May 2020. I have been on the ground providing triage services for all patients attending the hospital from late March 2020 and got more actively involved in caring for patients with COVID 19 from May. I made a few drastic changes in my lifestyle since that time because I was going to work from home, where I live with my elderly parents. I quarantined myself in my room, where my parents were not allowed. I started washing my clothes, dishes separately and stopped putting them in the common washing machine. My intera
I am searching… Vijay Gopichandran As I sit to write this, my hands are trembling. These fingers have danced over this keyboard for the past 5 months only to key in names, addresses, phone numbers and details of patients with COVID 19, to submit reports to the state government. These fingers which have the habit of completing words which begin with ‘me…’ as medicine, now complete any word starting with ‘p’ as positive by force of habit. So much of my routine life changed due to the pandemic and all things associated with it. Nowadays I leave home by 7 AM. So, my most precious morning writing routine has taken a beating. I return home on some days by 7 PM, some days even later, so my evening writing is also gone. Though I would not call myself overworked, I do not get any time to think, reflect and write, as most of my time is occupied in COVID 19 related work. So, I am glad, that I am writing this blog after a huge hiatus. I don’t know how this blog is going to pan out. I have not