2020 Member Journal: pandemic reflections

Coronavirus Groundhog Day

by Kimberly Winges, MD

A pandemic docmama’s work is never done,
No motivation for showers, no time for fun,
Her day starts too early with boisterous kids and email alerts
While her spouse sleeps in late, she drags out breakfast (confess: desserts).

The kids jump on the couch, their clothing rejected
Energy used to fight, cry, or scream, homeschool assignments neglected
She pauses, questioning her and their sanity
When wearing pants or makeup seems unnecessary vanity.

Instead she fills high her beloved coffee mugs
Poor substitutes for missing friends or extended family hugs
She locks herself in the home office,
Mama’s makeshift safe room Ripe for q5 minute break-ins, requests for milk, and kids streaking through Zoom.

Face to face interactions, the gold standard for patient care
Are reduced to telehealth calls, constant “wait, are you there?”,
Triaging cancelled patient visits on endless Excel spreadsheets,
While washing toddler pee-filled pajamas and while the oven reheats.

The days she escapes to the hospital are too many but too few,
Changing top to bottom, covering all her surfaces, for what else can she do?
She must protect her family from microscopic warriors so feared
Kids don’t get her back until she’s home changed, showered and sheared.

Speaking through stale masks and foggy goggle dissatisfaction
She thrives off real live smiles and patient interaction
Communication is hard enough, with complex cases, dementia, blindness
She tries for empathy transmitted through 6-foot distant kindness.

Roles should be more even back at home, breadwinners be damned
No partner spared from homeschool or dirty toilets unmanned
House improvement projects stare out like a beacon of hope,
As if there were actually time to start these—ha ha, they taunt, nope!

What was once the silver lining at being for a moment in just one place
Is extinguished with 6 things instead of two competing for her airspace
Everything takes 3 times longer, and workouts attempted to no avail,
Her choices are limited to video classes, she’s either super fit, fat or frail.

“Limited resources!” like a naïve millennial warbride she cries,
Missing girls’ nights out and playdates, to avoid the anxiety that underlies,
TP, veggies and bread used to be purchased without pleading
Now for fresh food, best get growing and kneading!

Not a bad plan for a surgeon used to hand skills and producing
Fingers constantly active, a new talent she is conducing
Creativity feeds off her wine and her yeast,
The kids want mac n’ cheese, but tonight’s a sourdough feast.

Dirty dishes pile up, no matter how much she washes and dries,
She’d much rather be operating on needy patient eyes,
Housekeepers, chefs, childcare, teachers revered,
Oh how they are missed, precious help disappeared!

She is mama, spouse, doctor, teacher, cook, and barber, so far,
Also a housekeeper whose work is, at best, subpar,
After wrestling her children to bed with a story and song cue
She falls asleep next to them in their bed before they do.

Credits:
Inspired by the old saying "Man may work from sun to sun, But woman's work is never done,” which itself was adapted from a poem from one of the original feminists, a washerwoman named Mary Collier, in 1739.
The Woman's Labour
AN EPISTLE TO MR. STEPHEN DUCK;
In ANSWER to his late Poem, called
THE THRESHER'S LABOUR.