My Wife Is Saving The World, While I Make Her Dinner

Summary

The author's wife, a dedicated infectious disease specialist, is working tirelessly as part of a COVID-19 contact tracing team to manage the pandemic's spread, while the author supports her by maintaining their home and life.

Abstract

In a personal essay, the author describes the admirable work ethic and commitment of their spouse, who has been instrumental in developing a contact tracing program in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The wife's role, which involves managing a team and creating protocols, is crucial yet may remain unsung in the annals of the pandemic's history. Despite the demanding nature of her job, requiring long hours and constant attention, the author provides unwavering support through domestic responsibilities and emotional encouragement. The narrative underscores the importance of public health work during crises and the sacrifices made by those behind the scenes, including the foregoing of personal leisure and the strain on family life.

Opinions

The author expresses immense pride

Being married to a disease detective during COVID-19

I always knew she was brilliant. She only applied to one college: and got in. She only applied to one medical school: and got in. Who does that? The rest of us are applying to dozens of colleges and medical schools — and rejected dozens of times. But not my wife. She knew exactly what she wanted and went for it.

At the end of her specialty training in Infectious Diseases, she decided she wanted to work for the Department of Health. It’s not super glamorous and the pay isn’t as good as if she were to work for a large, private hospital, but she was passionate about public health and effecting change for a population, rather than just one person. So that’s what she did.

She started out treating patients with infectious diseases. When COVID-19 broke out, she continued to work in those clinics while other people were deployed to help with the pandemic. I was so proud of her then — putting out the little fires while everyone else fought the big one. So imagine my pride at being her wife now.

Weeks later, she was handpicked to be on the COVID-19 contact tracer team. You know how Governor Cuomo keeps talking about hiring more and more contact tracers? Thousands of them. Contact tracers, while supremely important, are a group of people who do not need any healthcare qualifications whatsoever but are employed to staff a call center and ask a bunch of questions from a script. Who do you think manages them? Who do you think writes that script?

Over the past three weeks, I have had the privilege of supporting my wife as she saves the world. I’ve mentioned before, I’m a surgeon myself, and while my work is physically demanding for a day or two a week, the rest of the week I’m seeing patients in the office or via telemedicine. She has been working day and night for three weeks. No joke. 1am, she’s writing a protocol. 3pm, she’s on a phone call. Weekends, she is emailing from 10am to whenever. Memorial Day weekend we didn’t go anywhere. The two previous weekends we couldn’t go anywhere. I know it’s a pandemic but I’ve really been wanting to get away, perhaps go hiking. But there’s no use in me whining because she is literally saving the work so I shut up, feed the cats, feed us both, try to clean (though I’m terrible at it), and try to keep up my writing and my research. My biggest contribution to date is helping her figure out how to play an upbeat song to boost her team’s morale on their conference call each morning.

What started as a group of five people (she was one of the original ones) has multiplied into over 60. Once their project is in place, I am going to give shoutouts to everyone involved, because this is a group of people that, I believe, will otherwise fade into the background of history. We will recall the frontline heroes, those with the mask marks and the sweaty brows, we’ll remember Dr. Fauci, we’ll remember whomever perfects the vaccine. But will history mention, at all, the people who worked around the clock to put a contact tracing program in place? Probably not.

I’ve learned from listening in on all kinds of phone conferences what it takes to build a program like this from the ground up. First of all, find people. Find talented people who will divide the big work into smaller and smaller portions, until everyone has a role. Next, define those roles. Make everyone write about what they’re doing and fine tune this daily. Have phone conferences at least three times a day — with your leadership, with your team, with the state and cooperating agencies. Write protocols about what you’re going to do and come up with a name for your team. Have those thrown out the next day because the focus has changed. Do it again. I imagine every single one of her team members is a tightrope walker on a unicycle juggling flaming pins. Getting this wrong could be disastrous. Getting this wrong means people die.

Alas, our contact tracing team is here to save us from ourselves. While they don’t aim to find every single COVID-19 case in the city (we may be too far gone for that), they aim to find new cases and keep the numbers down — swiftly quarantining new contacts as soon as they’re found. All of this will be unveiled in early June.

As for me, I’ll keep cooking and cleaning for another week because my wife is saving the world.

Carmen Fong is a writer, artist, and colorectal surgeon who lives in New York City with her partner and two cats. She was a Stony Brook Children’s Literature Fellow and writes young adult novels. She also blogs about healthcare and surgery. Her poetry has been published in The Apothecary and on Medium.

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