From Norway: Maria Adele, hematologist
[*Special thanks for the translation to Maria Adele]
“I go to work every morning as usual. The hospital is locked down: only patients and the personal are allowed in, but not relatives.”
Maria Adele works as hematologist in one of the major hospital in Norway, where she has been living with her family for 20 years.
Since the pandemic started everything changed. The first case here was registered on the 26th of February, but the lockdown started on the 12th of march, but less restrictive than in Italy. Schools are closed, shopping centers have shorter opening hours, only few shops are open, many people work at home online and many have been permitted and don’t know if they will go back to their jobs.
Hospital and home : the pandemic’s reality and the warmth of the family
My day is usually hectic and it begins at 6 o’ clock in the morning. I have two daughters, one is 17 and one 8 years old. I don’t need to drive them to school nowadays and there is no traffic on the road! Before the Corona virus these two things would have been a release, but now they give me chills.
I am one of the “lucky people” who didn’t lost and will not loose the job, but the price is a a bit high and every day I hope I don’t get sick.
At work everything is totally changed : we talks to our patients on the phone or facetime and only very few meet up. The working activity is reduced, in the hospital ward there are less hematologic patients and more from other internal medicine departments. We have all been warned to not travel and we can be called anytime to work with COVID patients.
The hospital is locked down: only patients and the personal are allowed, but not relatives.The pressure is not so high for now: the COVID side is made of two medical departments and two of intensive care. In a couple of days they will take also our hematologic ward because they need more beds, while we will move to a non-Covid side.
This splitting gives me the chills and remind me the terrible images from Italy.
When I come back home I feel safe with my daughters. I appreciate the time I spend with them, minute by minute, more than I was doing before the pandemic , when I was rushing making food, checking the kids homeworks, making everything ready for the next day, reading and working at the same time. At 9 pm I was dead and went to sleep.
Now instead I talk a lot to my family and friends in Italy, I have time for them without stressing, I don’t worry about being tired , every minute I spend with them is precious and gives my joy.
Between work and home I have builded a very high wall that divides my life in two: security and family warmth from one side and the pandemic from the other side.
What is the mood?
I miss the feeling of moving among people without being suspicious . I miss the feeling of being free and out of danger.
I reconnected relationships with people I had lost because of the distance and the everyday life. I give a special value to the time that I spend with my family because everything is temporary and can disappear in a second. I rediscovered the importance of praying.
Everything seems so unreal, like in a movie. Often I truly struggle to understand why people around me don’t seem to comprehend this threat hanging upon us. This makes me so angry and at the same time I give up hopes.
Thinking about the future…
We don’t know how it s going to be after. In medicine we will have another pathogen to consider. I m not sure about what will change in the daily life . Maybe people will forget little by little.I want that my daughters remember this pandemic. During their life it can happen again.
The first thing I will do when everything will be over will be travelling to Italy to hug all the people I know there: family, relatives, friends from the North to the South.
#StayAtHome but… let’s stay together and human
It’s possible to be together at a distance. There is no limit when we love. The beauty of the social medias is this. We can come close to the people we love, go inside their houses, be with them with our thoughts, our heart and our words.
