Bamboo in a Typhoon

Thursday March 26, 2020

I woke up this morning and after reading my usual chapter in the scriptures, turned to see the latest news.  It was like watching a newscast of a typhoon tearing into a coastal city as I read of New York’s skyrocketing case load and death rate.  As feared, the cases have completely overcome the health department’s ability to search out contacts, isolate them and snuff out the epidemic.  They are bracing for the worst which is still to come.  Projections of being out of protective equipment and ventilators within two weeks is chilling.

I feel like we in St. Louis are like those inland cities which will get hit hard by the storm but have some time to prepare.  We can button down the hatches, put plywood on our windows and hunker down hard. The more we socially isolate, the better chance we have of the virus petering out and going away.  If we don’t, we will suffer the same consequences of those cities being hard hit right now.  The severity of our storm will be commensurate with our preparation.

Certainly there will be a wave of those who will get sick and require hospitalization and ICU care.  Tonight I participated in a conference call for all the doctors on staff at Missouri Baptist Hospital, where I work.  Two weeks ago our administration gathered together the physician leaders across medicine, surgery, anesthesia, ICU, ER and nursing.  They have met daily and have been putting together a plan to weather this storm.

As we primary care physicians have moved to telemedicine in order to touch base with our patients, the surgeons and other specialists have cancelled all routine procedures.  The ER has reformulated how patients are seen so that anyone who might have COVID virus is sent to a different entrance and fast tracked to appropriate care. There is one doctor and one nurse in charge of all such patients that need hospital admission and they work closely with the ICU team and the ER.  There is a dedicated elevator for these patients and their own floor of the hospital.  Assuming demand becomes excessive there are plans for mobilizing physician such as myself to take over the non COVID patients that need care or even help in the ICU.  Our anesthesiologists have all agreed to assist in the ICU as have our pulmonologists.

Tonight in the call, each physician/nurse leader described their part in the plan.  I was filled with emotion to be part of a team of dedicated professionals who are willing to do what it takes to care for the ill and maximize the safety of all those around them.  When the ICU physician was asked to report he said, “The ICU is like bamboo in a typhoon, we may bend but we won’t break!”

We likewise need to stand strong where we stand. Planted on the rock of Jesus Christ, we become a team of believers, willing to do whatever is asked to help those who have lost their way. Teaching his sons this very lesson, the prophet Helaman declared, “And now my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea his shafts in the whirlwind, yea when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation where on if men build they cannot fall.”