Doctor urges people to follow COVID rules in emotional post: 'Do not put us through this'

As India battles a grim second wave that has overwhelmed the healthcare system with an influx of younger patients waiting to find beds for hospital admission, a medic on Friday took to her official Instagram handle to warn about 'strict mask adherence’. Narrating the chaos at the hospitals as they buckled under the country’s rising COVID-19 caseload, and the waiting list for ICU beds, Doctor Saandhra gave a glimpse into what her past two weeks have been like. “I've been telling people that their 22-year-old son has died, lying to patients that they might recover, when I know to my bones they will not, been hearing breathless women crying in anguish all night, watching people break down in front of me,” the doctor at the COVID-19 dedicated hospital wrote in a post.

“The last words of one of our patients told me before my [doctor] friend intubated her was that she has an 11 and a 4-year-old at home and that we should not let her die.” The doctor continued, “She died.” The exhausted medic said that the surge had hit so hard, that she had been “looking at packed bodies and telling myself to stop thinking and go on with my work.” 

In a detailed post, sharing the photo of the hospital alongside, the doctor now struggling to save her patients said that she had been working as hard as she could wishing that the other healthcare workers would do the same. She then revealed that her own parents had contracted the coronavirus and were now under medical supervision. “6 hours in PPE all the while anxious about being exposed, anxious about dying just like our patient,” the doctor summed up her trauma in two lines. As the country set the eighth new highest record with 2,34,692 new COVID-19 cases and 1,341 deaths in the last 24 hours, the doctor appealed to the people to follow health safety norms and staying inside homes avoiding non-essential movement. “I wish I could show you videos of the pain I see, just to scare everyone enough for you to stay inside,” she said. 

Trust me your lockdowns are not difficult…You haven't seen the horrors we see… I wish I could show you videos of the pain I see, just to scare everyone enough for you to stay inside…

Internet calls medic 'a real hero'

The medic compared the scenes at the hospital with the rather ‘easy’ restrictions calling for the public to adhere to the latter with urgency as she discussed the emotionally straining sight of the patients overcrowding the hospitals. “Just wear your masks when you are outside,” she urged. The internet was moved by the ordeal of the healthcare worker, some appalled at her condition, but mostly users thanked the medics for their selfless service amid times of unprecedented crisis. “Thank you for everything you're doing. You're a real hero. A soldier. A warrior,” commenters said.