In February, nephrologist and Parker parent Dr. Mala Shah didn’t expect to be working with coronavirus patients. But just six weeks later, she stood in a hospital looking through the enclosed glass wall of an ICU room where a 65-year-old man lay on a ventilator taking his last breath.

While students and teachers are home adjusting to remote learning, Shah is among the various medical-professional Parker parents working on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Dr. Sunita Mohapatra, Parker parent, epidemiologist, and Division Chief of Infectious Disease at Mount Sinai Hospital, has shifted her focus to dealing with COVID-19. Mohapatra said that the time she previously used to meet with patients has been filled with the additional administrative work required to manage the pandemic. “Myself and my infectious-disease colleagues have basically started creating our hospital plan on how to handle the COVID outbreak which subsequently morphed into a pandemic,” Mohapatra said. She added that currently, COVID-infected patients make up roughly 90% of patients she sees, while the other 10% are infected with more standard infectious diseases.

Mohapatra’s administrative duties include dealing with new complications daily. “Every day some new issue arises. What do you do with a homeless person who has COVID? What do you do with a pregnant person that has it? Each day there’s something new.”

Mohapatra also noted the economic and racial inequalities the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted. According to Mohapatra, her hospital, Mt. Sinai, located in the West Side, has had a “disproportionate number of fatalities compared to other places that have a different patient population and more resources,” Mohapatra said.

As an epidemiologist, Mohapatra said that her colleagues expected a pandemic to occur soon but not necessarily one of this magnitude. “We’ve all in the infectious disease community, we’ve been aware that a pandemic would likely occur,” Mohapatra said. “We’ve certainly dealt with outbreaks. I’ve been practicing for 20 plus years. From things such as SARS, to Ebola, to the level of this scale, I think this is a pretty historical one.”

Parker parent Dr. Melissa Dennis, an OB/Gyn and Interim Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Lakeview, says that the main change to her daily practice has been to accommodate the additional safety measures needed to deal with COVID-19. According to Dennis, delivery rooms have been limited to one “support person,” who must pass a screening for COVID-19, which includes a series of questions and a temperature test.

Dennis also says that personal protection for doctors has increased greatly. Whereas previously a gown, mask and eye protection would suffice, now full personal protective equipment (PPE) is required. “Now when we go in for a delivery, we are in full PPE including face shields, a hair covering, an N95 mask, my glasses, the gown, the gloves and boots over my shoes,” Dennis said.

As a nephrologist who has practiced for over 13 years and worked through other viral pandemics such as SARS in 2003 and Ebola in 2014, Shah did not expect to be drawn into the COVID-19 crisis. “Nothing really did this to us as a profession,” Shah said. “We never got pulled in like this. We have colleagues that are getting sick. That did not happen with any of the other viruses or other illnesses that have come along in the last few years. I did not anticipate this sort of reality.”

In addition to spending long hours working, doctors with children often separate themselves within their own home. Shah’s family has kept a distance for more than six weeks. “We are doing what we can within our space to not be near each other,” Shah said, “so other than the puppy, we don’t really have any physical contact.”

Shah’s daughter, sophomore Chloe Shah, says distancing from her family was strange at first but has now become normal. “I have to FaceTime my mom, she has to FaceTime me because I can’t go near her,” Chloe Shah said. “It was super weird at first, but now I’m kind of used to it.”

Chloe Shah contrasted her situation with her friends’. “I see my friends going on family walks, spending so much time with their families to the point where they’re getting annoyed with them,” Chloe Shah said. “But I don’t even have the littlest bit of time with them.”

One of the most jarring aspects of dealing with COVID-19, according to Mala Shah, is the sometimes rapid decline in health of hospitalized patients. “We would see people in the emergency room that would be kind of talking and just coughing a little bit and later in the day, they’d be on a ventilator, and the next day they’d be gone,” Shah said. “That’s often the trajectory for this disease, no matter what we do. That’s been very unsettling, even for people who have been practicing medicine for a long time.”

Shah noted a particular case that has stood out to her since the beginning of the pandemic. “There was a relatively healthy, 65-year-old gentleman who was admitted with a fever, typical symptoms—a little bit of chest pain and shortness of breath. But he was very comfortable,” she said. Shah spoke to the patient each day, who she said was in good spirits and doing relatively well. But after almost a week in the ICU, his condition rapidly declined.

“Everything seemed fine. His kidneys were only mildly compromised, nothing terrible, we were just basically monitoring them,” Shah said. “And then five to six days later, he crashed. He was on a breathing machine. I could no longer talk to him. And his wife, of course, she could not come in. We had to just let her see her husband on FaceTime using the nurse’s phone. She could just see him towards the end.”

After seeing her husband’s state, the patient’s wife decided to sign a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order. Shah says the patient died shortly thereafter. “When he did ultimately pass, this was a person I had just been talking to, but never was able to actually get near,” Shah said. “That has been very difficult for us as a profession. We are also so accustomed to families being at the bedside daily, especially near the end. Patients are dying alone.”

Cases like these, with doctors treating patients infected with the coronavirus, are not the situations where personal contact is limited. Much of medical practice has lost in-person visitation due to safety concerns. Shah, who normally would visit numerous hospitals and meet with patients in-office and in dialysis centers has shifted primarily to “telemedicine” over video platforms such as FaceTime and Zoom, or simply via a telephone call.

Mohapatra, Dennis, and Shah all agree that when the COVID-19 pandemic will end is unclear, but that the best thing anyone can do right now is stay home. “As much as we’re all dying to get out to the parks, or see our friends and do our stuff, I can tell you from being on the front lines, it’s a small sacrifice that we all have to make,” Mohapatra said. “Those small sacrifices can save lives.”