DR QIAN POST THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Our cover star, Dr Qian, worked in A&E during the height of the pandemic - in her own words she describes what that was like and how she is coping with life over one year later.

In February 2020, I went back to work in A&E part time after becoming established in my aesthetics business. I went back because I missed medicine, and I didn’t want all those years of training to go to waste - Little did I know, that I was about to throw myself into the biggest pandemic the world has ever seen!

I had been out of hospital medicine for 3 years, while I was doing facial aesthetics full time, so it was a bit daunting to go back to work in Emergency Medicine. On my first shift back, I was asked to see a patient who presented with symptoms of covid-19 and I had to take a nose and throat swab from her. I had no formal personal protective equipment (PPE) training at the time, and I had never worn so much PPE before, I could hardly breath under the FFP3 mask, and was terrified because we didn't really know what we were dealing with at that time. 

I then had to make the difficult decision of whether to keep working in A&E or not, and risk catching this deadly virus and passing it onto my family. Being a doctor, this is what I was trained to do, and I knew that my colleagues needed me now, more than ever. So, I continued to work there.

In March 2020, my fears came true and I caught covid-19. At that time, we weren't allowed to wear masks unless it was to see a patient suspected to have covid-19. We couldn't walk around with a face mask on because it looked bad and was making other patients anxious. Not surprisingly, I, along with about 30% of our A&E staff were off sick with covid-19.

Although I felt pretty awful for a few days, the hardest thing about having covid-19 was having to stay away from my children, aged 7 and 4. They had no concept of the virus at the time, and they really struggled to understand why they couldn’t hug me all of a sudden – it was heart-breaking.  However, I actually consider myself very lucky as apart from the fever, muscle ache, loss of sense of smell and an irritating dry cough, my breathing was relatively unaffected and I made a good recovery after about a week, and thankfully, prevented my family members from catching it.

I was back in work by April and now the national lockdown was in full swing and everyone in the hospital was wearing face masks. Having recovered from covid-19 and developing some immunity against the virus, I was feeling less anxious about working in the pandemic. During the lockdown, and as you’d expect, my aesthetics work came to a complete stop; not only was I working in A&E but I was also struggling with home schooling just like every other parent in the country. However, I felt lucky that I still had a job that I could go to and have some in-person adult interactions which really kept me sane during the intensity of the first lockdown.  

I get asked all the time what it was like to be in the ‘thick of it’ and I’m not going to lie, working on the frontline during the pandemic has been tough, emotionally and physically. I remember seeing a 97-year old lady who came into A&E because her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. It had bled so much that it dropped her blood count significantly, which made her light-headed when she tried to walk.  Apart from the nose bleeds she was fit and well but was living on her own and her daughters lived too far away to come and help out. It wasn’t safe to send her home because she could fall and hit her head, but if she stayed in hospital, she was definitely going to catch covid-19. These were the impossible decisions we were faced with day in day out.

Working in A&E again really re-ignited my love for medicine and reminded me just how important health is for everyone. So, I decided that when I was able to go back to my aesthetic business I really wanted to change my approach because it had reinforced my belief that taking a holistic approach to facial rejuvenation, starting with skin health, was the right way forward.

Fast forward over a year since the world first shut, we are coming out of the second wave and the third lockdown. The vaccination programme has, no doubt, made a big difference. However, unlike the end of the first lock down, everyone is a bit more cautious this time round. We may be doing ok right now in the UK, but other countries are not doing so great. This is not the end of covid-19, and we all know it. It’s easy to let it get to you and make you feel down and hopeless as a result, however, I believe that something positive can come out of all this.

Over the past year, I have been a business owner whose business was severely affected by the pandemic, I have been an A&E doctor fighting covid-19 on the frontline, I’ve caught and recovered from covid-19, and I have been a mum of two trying to juggle home schooling around everything else. While I have been busy trying to keep organised to get things done, I’ve not given myself enough ‘me time’, and I was slowly losing my own identity and my goals. I was becoming more and more unhappy, and I would get irritable and snap at my children or my husband when they didn’t do anything wrong. I believe I am responsible for my own happiness, and as we are coming out of the second wave, it’s about time that I get myself back on track. That’s what this makeover is about. 

Zoom meetings have become the new norm but rather than waiting for it all to go back to the way it was, we must learn to get on with our lives and live by the new rules. We don’t have to change our goals, just need to find a new way of reaching them and navigating through the chaos because there are opportunities in every crisis. So let’s move forward with hope and optimism.