20 4.5.20 Photo illustrations by Ina Jang
Diagnosis By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
‘‘I don’t know what you’re feeling,’’ the
supervising doctor said over the phone,
his voice calm and reassuring. ‘‘But based
on the text you sent me, you shouldn’t
go to work.’’ The 29-year-old woman, an
anesthesiology resident in her second
year of training, breathed a sigh of relief.
‘‘Now,’’ the training-program director
continued, ‘‘tell me what’s going on.’’
Two days earlier, on March 14, the
young doctor fi nished her sixth straight
day of 12-hour shifts in the surgical inten-
sive care unit in her hospital in Boston.
She was exhausted, but that wasn’t unusu-
al. Yet when she woke up the next day,
her only day off , she didn’t feel well. It
wasn’t much — a queasy stomach, a lit-
tle headache and brain fog. Her muscles
were sore, as if she had lifted weights the
day before. And when she took a deep
breath, her chest felt strangely tight. She
fi gured that she was just recovering from
what had been a really tough week.
The following day, she felt fi ne when
her alarm went off at 5 a.m. She got to the
hospital by 6, but before the day start-
ed, she was told she wasn’t needed. All
elective surgeries had been postponed
because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and
so there weren’t many patients in the
surgical I.C.U. She and her co-resident
made a deal: Her colleague would care
for their patients that day, and she’d take
over the next.
Later that day, the subtle symp-
toms from the day before worsened.
She didn’t feel sick exactly, just not
like herself. She had been training for
the Boston Marathon, before it was
rescheduled for September, and she
decided to go for a run. She fi nished
her six-mile loop with no trouble, but
she still felt a little off. Was she getting
sick? Her husband, a doctor at the same
hospital, didn’t feel sick, either, but for
the past couple of days, he had a cough.
Could this be Covid-19, the respiratory
infection caused by the novel corona-
virus SARS-CoV-2 — the virus that was
sweeping across the United States and
much of the rest of the world?↓
Typical Symptoms
From what she had read, that infection
usually caused a fever, cough and short-
ness of breath. The young doctor had
none of those. She had a bit of chest
tightness, but it didn’t make her feel outThe doctor’s symptoms weren’t
typical of coronavirus. Was she sick
enough to stay home from work?