Diary of a NYC Hospital: Losing Hope in the ICU
“I don’t know how long I can keep doing this for”
As told to Anna Silman
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to unfold, the medical staff at Mount Sinai Brooklyn is providing regular dispatches about the daily experience fighting the virus. While there have been glimmers of good news lately, with indications that New York’s curve may be close to flattening, doctors on the front lines are still living a nightmare. Dr. Adam Brenner runs the ICU at Mount Sinai Brooklyn. It’s one of the hospital’s most difficult and emotionally demanding jobs, tending to the sickest patients with the least hope of recovering. Dr. Brenner, who works 14-to-15-hour days six days a week, says the demands of his job have increasingly started to weigh on him. While he is committed to fighting through to the end, he knows it’s going to be very difficult to go back to normal after this is all over. Here, his dispatch.
Today wasn’t a great day. We did the best we could. It just went on and on. A lot of people just dying in front of us. Due to the nature of the crisis, there are so many sick patients overwhelming the staff. It’s very difficult to get everyone into the ICU in a timely manner. We’ve tried to deploy other physicians and medical personnel to help manage the critical-care patients on the floor, but…
