Practising medicine was wearing me out. Trapped under referrals, late to collect children, a witness to patients’ unsolvable tragedies, and angered by poor funding, I had begun to question whether this was still my life’s work. Was I flogging a dead horse and holding on to capability and ideals that were no longer mine? I would fall asleep exhausted by analysis, praying for a renaissance of thought. Mine came in the most unexpected of ways.
It all began with a throat tickle. The kind that one would ‘suck up’ and ignore as a junior doctor, don a scarf and get on with as a mum on the school run, grab a hot drink to get through surgery as a GP. As the day ended however, the tickle had turned into a cough. It was mid-March. COVID-19 had moved from a distant, improbable occurrence to the forefront of my mind …