The Things They Carry: Veterans and the COVID-19 Pandemic
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J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-020-06048-x © Society of General Internal Medicine (This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply) 2020
n unnatural stillness hung over our Veterans Affairs A (VA) medical center; COVID-19 had stifled the usual traffic and crush of people entering the 15-story building. To facilitate symptom screening of patients and staff, all entrances were closed but one. One morning, an older man and I converged, as if in sync, on the lone portal. Waiting in the courtyard, we greeted each other in unison, “Good Morning” and then, in a move that has now become instinctive in social interactions, we simultaneously stepped farther apart. Realizing he was a patient, I asked how he was doing. He answered, “I feel like I’m in Vietnam.” This pronouncement stopped whatever standard reply I might normally have offered. I stilled, concerned. “I was just 18 when I was there, you know, only 18,” he added. Although we had never met, emboldened by the strange intimacy of the empty walkway, I asked, “How is this like Vietnam for you?” He replied, “indecisive leadership, the constant invisible threat and feeling on edge.” I told him how sorry I was that this was bringing back memories of Vietnam, wished him health and safety, and thanked him for his service as we parted ways. Waving goodbye, he added, “thank you my sister for all you do.” I was moved by this generous inclusion of me, a stranger, in his “family” at a time when crisis had awakened distant memories of wartime. Throughout that day, an eerie calm pervaded the building, and the Veteran’s words kept coming back to me. “I feel like I’m in Vietnam.” “Sister.” In his collection of short stories, “The Things They Carried,”1 Tim O’Brien described what his fellow soldiers in Vietnam carried literally and figuratively into battle, and how they shouldered that weight together. “They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or the weak. They carried infection ….They carried the sky.” In this pandemic
Received May 17, 2020 Accepted July 9, 2020
with its necessary social distancing, our Veterans carry burdens accumulated during prior military service, including the enduring emotional weight of combat and other service-related traumas, along with physical health sequelae and chronic medical conditions that may put them at heightened risk for complications of COVID-19. Their military service has rendered them simultaneously vulnerable and strong; resilient in this time of crisis, they have much to teach us. I soon learned that my entryway comrade was not alone, many Veteran patients and colleagues were experiencing the pandemic through the lens of past military service. The voice of a typically stoic nursing colleague broke when she shared that stories of COVID-19 patients dying in isolation without family at the bedside brought back her time in a Vietnam field hospital caring for mortally wounded soldiers. Dur
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