
Our clinic was eerily quiet on St. Patrick’s Day this year. Many of our patients had cancelled following the social isolation recommendations they were hearing about in the media based on how easily the COVID-19 virus spreads. The daily news report and update on the number of deaths from China, Italy, and now Spain was alarming. Horror stories of cruise ships and their passengers being quarantined and not allowed to return to homeports because the infection had spread were increasing.
Guidance from several epidemiologists provided assurance to staff that hand washing and not touching your mouth or face, a now familiar chant among people everywhere, were indeed effective measures. Gloves and facemasks were not necessary (though that recommendation was altered in the weeks that followed). Disinfecting everything that people touched in the clinic was essential and crucial.
Two-thirds of the patients we see at our clinic are over the age of 65 and identified as the most at-risk to become infected, and so it was not a surprise that most were opting to stay home. This immediate drop in business was likely happening in every clinic that is part of our physical therapy company. If the situation continued and our client base did not return, it was inevitable that our employees and all of our jobs would be negative impacted.
Meanwhile, naturally, our staff were experiencing all sorts of personal emotions: outrage that we were still working and potentially putting ourselves and our patients at risk of becoming infected; annoyance and aggravation at having to leave kids home unattended to do online home school; complete absorption with every news and social media update and opinion related to the disease; fear about what it meant for jobs since there were too few patients to keep everyone busy; introversion and very quietly trying to work as normal; and of course, outwardly carrying on with patient interaction and treatments in the spirit of business as normal.
As we fast-forward to April and the President and Governor’s orders to stay at home, the number of our employees who have been furloughed is staggering. These are the same people who make up our work families. The financial and emotional effect on their lives, as we try to make sense of this crisis and when life will return to a more normal path, is unknown.
Spring break, Easter, and Passover have come and gone. Interacting with extended family, friends, and now many of our patients is through a video camera on our computers and phones. Our clinics are operating with skeleton crews as we navigate this new norm. Communication with the people who make our clinics thrive, the employees, is done mostly by email now as we wait out this life-changing period.
Stanley McChrystal shared, “What we don’t know, we fill with terrifying thoughts in our mind,” in a recent radio interview. There is no firm date, yet, when our work lives will return to normal. But, as Dr. Laurie Santos explains in The Science of Well-Being, “the human brain is wired to be resilient. Our psychological immune system has the ability, in fact the tendency, to adapt to and cope with negative events.”
Hang on to hope. Try to find meaning in your new daily routine. And when this crisis ends, your priorities and the things you want may have changed. You may be grateful for elements of your life that you once took for granted.