The Noise of a Pandemic

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Abstract

e up from her Dermatology board exam in La Jolla — another casualty of the pandemic; the exam used to be in Orlando — I found myself frustrated by the traffic. The number of cars on the road seemed to be back up to pre-pandemic levels. When I drove the same route from Long Beach to La Jolla back in April, it was like driving on a desolate ghost highway from a Walking Dead episode, except for the Pacific Ocean on my right.This new feeling of frustration elicited a strange and uncomfortable jolt of longing for those quiet days during the first wave. I would finish my shift in anticipation of a quiet, carefree drive down the Calfiornia coast, with my wife waiting at the other end. We’d grab takeout from our favorite restaurant down the street, now offering charcuteri plates to go and delicious quarentinis. I had forgotten that leaving the hospital wards or intensive care unit after an amped up day, exhausted from admitting patients, rounding with attendings, dawning and doffing personal protective equipment

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, was like leaving a world of chaos and entering one of solitude.The streets were eerily quiet, barely a soul out in my neighborhood. I could run down to the peninsula along (but not on) the wide beaches in the Belmont Shore area without crossing paths with a single jogger. It was comforting, despite the disaster and destruction I left back at the hospital and the suffering I knew to be ongoing in other hospitals around the world.This is not a “grass is always greener” sentiment or a cry for the ever retreating days of a bygone era. It is a desire for normalcy. The quietness that marked the early days of the pandemic began to feel normal so quickly because the world is so loud, and frankly abnormal. Between social media on the digital end and packed cities with bustling traffic (this is a bash on Los Angeles) on the tangible end, the world is loud. Only when I find myself in the mountains around Lake Tahoe or the cliffs of the Sonoma County coast does the world feel normal — at least to me.</article></body>

The Noise of a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot about our daily lives, obviously. When it all started I was half way through my medicine intern year in Long Beach working over 80 hours per week. That actually did not change much. This brought about a lack of appreciation for how much change was afoot. I of course noticed the long lines to get into Trader Joe’s and the paucity of toilet paper on the shelves and the closing of Orange Theory Fitness. I mean honestly these are the only things that matter when you are a medicine intern.

Now we are about ten months into the maelstrom with over 200,000 dead and I am on to a residency in diagnostic radiology, yet there is a hint of normalcy behind all the masking and social distancing and mostly open restaurants. Last week while I drove down the I-5 to pick my wife up from her Dermatology board exam in La Jolla — another casualty of the pandemic; the exam used to be in Orlando — I found myself frustrated by the traffic. The number of cars on the road seemed to be back up to pre-pandemic levels. When I drove the same route from Long Beach to La Jolla back in April, it was like driving on a desolate ghost highway from a Walking Dead episode, except for the Pacific Ocean on my right.

This new feeling of frustration elicited a strange and uncomfortable jolt of longing for those quiet days during the first wave. I would finish my shift in anticipation of a quiet, carefree drive down the Calfiornia coast, with my wife waiting at the other end. We’d grab takeout from our favorite restaurant down the street, now offering charcuteri plates to go and delicious quarentinis. I had forgotten that leaving the hospital wards or intensive care unit after an amped up day, exhausted from admitting patients, rounding with attendings, dawning and doffing personal protective equipment, was like leaving a world of chaos and entering one of solitude.The streets were eerily quiet, barely a soul out in my neighborhood. I could run down to the peninsula along (but not on) the wide beaches in the Belmont Shore area without crossing paths with a single jogger. It was comforting, despite the disaster and destruction I left back at the hospital and the suffering I knew to be ongoing in other hospitals around the world.

This is not a “grass is always greener” sentiment or a cry for the ever retreating days of a bygone era. It is a desire for normalcy. The quietness that marked the early days of the pandemic began to feel normal so quickly because the world is so loud, and frankly abnormal. Between social media on the digital end and packed cities with bustling traffic (this is a bash on Los Angeles) on the tangible end, the world is loud. Only when I find myself in the mountains around Lake Tahoe or the cliffs of the Sonoma County coast does the world feel normal — at least to me.