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‘I’ve been through 9/11, but this is our first pandemic’ — What a veteran NYC ER doctor is learning while caring for coronavirus patients

Dr. Billy Goldberg says the sheer volume of sick patients is ‘something we’ve never confronted before’

So much is being learned so quickly about this novel coronavirus. And so much is still unknown.

“People think doctors have all the answers,” Dr. Billy Goldberg was saying near the end of another grueling shift in the NYU Langone Health emergency room on Manhattan’s First Avenue. “That’s not true in a regular setting. It’s particularly untrue when a disease is 3 months old.”

And yet where else can these desperate patients present themselves when they take a turn for the worse, if not one of the city’s suddenly overburdened emergency rooms? This is a high-stakes place on a normal day. During this potential week of the apex of COVID-19 cases in New York, the lifesaving and life-losing are off the charts. The doctors, nurses and med techs who toil here, they are all about teamwork. And they are often the best and final hope these patients have. So get used to all the uncertainty.

“We are learning from our colleagues online,” Goldberg said. “We are learning from seeing more patients every day. We are constantly re-evaluating our protocols. The sheer volume of sick, respiratory patients, it’s something we’ve never confronted before.”

If anyone should know, it’s Billy Goldberg. He’s been inside these walls for 25 years. “I’ve been through the first World Trade Center bombing, Hurricane Sandy and 9/11,” he said. “We are used to seeing a lot of disaster here, but this is our first pandemic.”

He has a wife and three young children, ages 10, 12 and 14. On Friday, he turns 54, a birthday he won’t forget anytime soon.

“We had a woman in her late 40s,” he said. “She was about to go up to a regular floor when one of the nurses identified her as maybe someone who was too sick to go.” The nurse was onto something. “On my last shift, I was sitting with the resident who was taking care of her, going over his notes. When we got to this woman, both of us were shocked to see the death note. It makes you think about what’s coming next.”

The virus is especially cruel to those with other medical weaknesses.

“There’s a patient I admitted two days ago,” the doctor said. “I can’t get her out of my mind. She looked great when we admitted her. Normally, we would have sent her home. But she’d had a heart transplant two months ago. I think about how wonderful she must have felt when she got her new heart. Now, she’s in the hospital and has coronavirus.”

Her prognosis?

“That’s the thing. We just don’t know. I check her chart every day.”

Many of the patients feel isolated. Their families do, too. “I had a Mandarin-speaking patient who was all alone,” Goldberg said. “His son called. ‘There are no visitors,’ I told him. ‘But I will happily meet you in front of the hospital. Bring a phone. Bring a charger. I will give it to your dad.’ We try to do those things. But in the midst of all this chaos, we don’t always have the opportunity.”

There’s not much doubt that, when all this is over, it will have taken a psychological toll.

“The chairman of psychiatry led a discussion with our faculty,” the ER doctor said. And the other day, while discharging a psychiatric patient, Goldberg joked with the psych nurse as she handed him an iPad: “Maybe I could have a session right now.”

“I would be happy to do that,” she said brightly, though the ER doc declined.

“Actually, my shift is ending in 30 minutes,” he said. “This is the easiest part of my day.” It was almost time for his checkout routine.

“I wash myself as well as I can at the hospital,” he said. “I wipe down and disinfect everything that is going to remain with me, my ID badge, my phone. Then, I walk home.

“I need to breathe fresh air, and I need to unwind. At 7 p.m., I hear people leaning out their windows and cheering. Occasionally, somebody sees me in scrubs and takes a couple of steps away. But just as often, people thank me for my service. That’s awfully nice to hear.”

Goldberg has colleagues who are staying in hotels now. “But my family is healthy, and we don’t know how long this is going to last,” he said. “We disinfect a lot of surfaces. We do a lot of hand washing. There are bottles of Purell everywhere. It’s a New York City apartment. We’re all on top of each other. But we take what precautions we can.”

Such are the times we are living in. And when he gets home each night, “I put my clothes in a pile at the door,” the emergency-room doctor said. “Those go straight into the wash. My shoes stay outside, and I go right into the shower. It makes me appreciate hot water more than I’ve ever appreciated hot water before.”

Ellis Henican is an author based in New York City and a former newspaper columnist.

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