Unsung Covid Heroes
Pictured above: Staff member Nikki Danko helps her children with virtual learning during COVID.
They say heroes are born - not made - and that it’s in the heat of battle where the true chromosomal make-up of a person is tested and heroic deeds arise.
Many individuals owe their lives to the thousands of front line healthcare providers who, over the last year, put their own lives on the line to save others. And all of us owe a debt of gratitude to those companies that were able to produce all the PPEs… and to the researchers who, in an amazingly short period of time, produced the vaccines to help us beat the pandemic and return to as normal a life as possible. I give my own personal “thanks” to all these individuals for protecting my family, staff, patients, and myself.
But I’d like to take a minute to reflect on a group of unsung heroes who may not have been involved in saving your life or my life, but they kept those around them safe…
Along with safety, they also were involved with massive sterilization programs that had to be reinitiated every morning. They did this in the early stages, without proper instruments or chemicals and very few PPEs and no formal training! This group was responsible for survival tactics, while quarantined, against an unknown and unseen enemy. Food had to be prepared and served, sometimes without knowing where the next meal would come from. At the same time, the immediate surrounding group had to be bathed, entertained, and educated by this group who had to keep their cool and wits about them, at the level of a Navy Seal. No plan of attack, no manual to run on, and the only data to inform decisions was presented every day at 2PM by the governor.
This group had to decipher and decode every afternoon announcement, then extract the wheat from the shaft in order to interpret it to their troops.
This group of unsung heroes that I am talking about I am very familiar with, having spent the last 36 years working with them and being one myself for the past 29 years.
The group I’m talking about - the parents of the world!
This group needs a round of applause and more than one pat on the back.
Yes, the pandemic has been rough on everyone, but parents have had a really rough go of it, especially those with school-age children. We all know how challenging parenthood is in good times… but close the schools and quarantine these emotional, high-energy dynamos behind four walls all day and you’ll agree, teachers are underpaid!
Let’s go one step further toward insanity… let’s have education done virtually on computers with parents like me who need help with the TV remote!
The icing on the cake was when education went hybrid, a little bit of this and not much of that. To say education took a hit in 2020 would be an understatement! But parents being a resilient and resourceful lot…
We fought through it and we are better people, as are our children, for the experience.
Like our parents and grandparents, who lived through the Depression and two World Wars, in years to come it will make interesting dinner conversation with our grandchildren. And heck, we had it easy with only one year and change to struggle. The Depression lasted 10 years and WWII six years and one day!
So parents, congratulations on a job very well done. There may have been times when it was purely faith and love that got your family through, but you did it. And most of us have to admit, family life - though sometimes strained - came out of Covid so much closer and so full of love and respect for each other, that in years to come we may actually miss the little virus… Ok, maybe not!
To our unsung heroes… the parents of the world… as we return to some form of normalcy… get outside, take in the sweet smells of Spring, shop local, and enjoy a weekend with your family that may have felt much different 1 year ago.
- Dr. P