Tag Archives: crisis

Apr17

Teleworking week 5: view from home

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As weeks add to the teleworking mode, when I am asked about how am I doing, I usually answer: “I am glad I am not a doctor or a nurse”. Me becoming a doctor was my mother’s dream who did not get into medical school at her time. These days, I am particularly grateful that I disobeyed her wish.

This post is not about me. It is about the millions of doctors, nurses, hospital workers and healers of all kinds of medicine. Those who leave their warm beds early mornings to get to white rooms filled with people who suffer. Those who hold hands of kids on a hospital beds and get to see their own kids only when they sleep. Those who do shifts after shifts and sleep wherever they can in quiet minutes. Those who come home after 32 hours in a hospital and do their household duties as if they have been on a city break. Those who keep their warm smiles for every patient, even if their inner world is in ruins. Those who fight the unknown and unseen as a fairytale immortal fighter. Those who cry, when they cannot see it anymore, and then wipe out their tears and keep doing the best they can.

And I am not even going into the supplies, equipment, infrastructure, miserable wages so many of them have to cope with in so many countries. If we cannot do their job, then we can at least honor their work by #stayinghome. That’s not too much to ask.

Monaco, photo by Monaco Info
Mar28

Teleworking week 2: view from home, part 1

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The closest pharmacy to my place is on the ground floor of my apartments bloc. The other day, as I was waiting outside for my turn to enter, a seniour citizen in his late 70s “approached” me:

– You are not wearing a mask…. Why?, he asked, a bandana in his hand.

– I do not need to. It serves those who are sneezing, coughing…, I answered summoning all my empathy.

– You know, he replied, I am terrified. I watch the TV and see all that….

– I have no TV for ten years now.

– You may be right, he said,…about the TV.

– Would you like to go inside the pharmacy? I can wait, I offered.

He gladly took my offer. I could hear their conversation. The pharmacist assumed he had hearing problems so he was yelling his answers. The gentleman was clearly scared. He did not buy anything. He needed human interaction and hypeless communication.

There is no right or wrong way to react to all around in these new circumstances. It’s one thing to watch a SF movie and another to be here and now. This is one of the reasons I never liked SF movies and apocalyptic views.

Back to the story of this gentleman. He is one of the millions, indoors, with a TV only as a company, probably, his loneliness brought at another level… . Psychologists already noticed it. Too many bad news and little information on recovery is dangerous for the human psyche. Psychologists around the world keep encouraging to try to look for positives and share them when you talk to others. It is demonstrated by research that a stressed mind diminishes the immune response.

Some countries and regions have installed services for people to call and talk to someone. Some of us are doing it at personal level – through baskets of solidarity or food ordered and delivered to those who need it. I see it in my country, enabled by charities joining forces with the business, like Diaconia and Kaufland.

Again, on a personal level one can read a book by skype/phone or start a virtual book club. Or put together a list of online entertainment: free opera streaming, concerts, movies, virtual museums visits etc. Little gestures which bring a human voice and touch to a lonely human heart … .

I loved Daniel Kaufmann’s article of this week “Caremongering – random acts of kindness” https://www-brookings-edu.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/03/19/caremongering-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-random-acts-of-kindness-and-online-enrichment/amp/

Here is to caremongering – random acts of kindness today and everyday.