Life Out on the Frontline
Nearly every person in this issue refuses to be called a hero, but make no mistake: These LGBTQ frontline and essential workers are keeping the wheels turning on this country of ours. They’re keeping hospitals running, keeping stores stocked, and risking their lives to make sure the rest of us don’t have to leave our protective bubble until the quarantine is over. We celebrate them as much as we do any soldier, activist, or celebrity. Salute.
Brian Taussig, The Anesthesiologist
Before COVID-19, a normal day would find Brian Taussig, a third-year anesthesiology resident physician, in an operating room at one of New York City’s largest hospitals. “As anesthesiologists and anesthesiologists in training, we are essentially the critical care doctors of the operating room. Airway management (e.g., placing a breathing tube into the windpipe), invasive monitor placement, intravenous access, and hemodynamic monitoring and management comprise our wheelhouse.”
Now his days are spent in intensive care units where he describes dealing with COVID-19 as like something out of a science fiction movie. Healthcare providers are clad in head-to-toe protective gear and patients are all intubated on ventilators. There are no visitors; this is the hardest part. “For some of the patients we intubate, we are the last people they ever see or hear,” Taussig says. Patients are surrounded by nurses and doctors, but they’re “spending their final days struggling without loved ones by their sides…fighting this battle without a kiss, a handhold, or a warm embrace from those who know and love them.”
Adding to what is already physically and emotionally grueling work is the struggle of knowing that while he has been able to help fight this pandemic in many far-reaching ways, he is unable to help in one of the simplest: he cannot donate blood. “There is an increasing need for blood donations, and while the FDA has relaxed the restrictions on blood donations from men who have sex with men, an unnecessarily strict restriction still exists on donations from our community.” He says it feels like an affront: “‘Thank you for running into the fire every day but keep your blood to yourself.’”
Behind-the-scenes, the feeling of community within the hospital has been transformed. “There is a sense of caring and ‘We’re all in this together’ between nurses, physicians, medical aids, and all frontline workers that I had not seen until now,” Taussig says. “This experience has bonded us in ways that nothing else could and that is a positive takeaway.”
Dr. Punch, The Surgeon
A trauma surgeon and intensivist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Dr. LJ Punch has been working closely with COVID-19 patients since the pandemic began.
Specializing in surgeries to treat infections and “nontraumatic intra-abdominal emergencies,” the genderqueer doctor is currently working
