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“I am angry with you, Mr. M.” – Under this headline, the German weekly Die Zeit published a long and emotional letter from a doctor in the intensive care unit of a university clinic in Germany to his patient. “One contracted Covid-19 without being vaccinated, the other is fighting for his life,” Deutsche Welle quoted Die Zeit as saying.
“I remember very clearly the day you were admitted with a severe form of Kovid-19 in our ward – with increasing shortness of breath,” the doctor wrote in the first lines. He learned from his colleagues that the new patient had not been vaccinated. “At that moment, I was thinking about the horrific growth of infections, the excessive morbidity that made adequate pandemic crisis management impossible, and that our intensive care unit would be overcrowded in a matter of weeks.”
“Current mortality could have been prevented”
As a doctor who has been working in an intensive care unit for 20 years, I am used to facing death and suffering. I consider myself a resilient person. But what I have to go through right now makes me hypersensitive. This hypersensitivity it is also due to my belief that the actual mortality in patients with Kovid-19 could have been prevented, that it was completely unnecessary, “the doctor wrote next to his patient.
“And then you came, Mr. M. – unvaccinated, and unvaccinated by conviction.” The doctor tried to stay calm, but he was actually angry and well aware that there would be a conversation between them. At the same time, you wondered if it was not better for the doctor to purposefully save information about whether the patient has been vaccinated or not.
“We doctors are not just healers – we always build a personal relationship with the patient. Despite our desire to be absolutely objective, we remain people who both try to treat suffering patients with respect and can explain some contradictions to them. and take a position on their decisions and behavior. “
Instead of fighting the pandemic together …
This is exactly what the doctor did: he entered into an open dialogue with the patient and presented to him his most important thoughts on the subject. “Maybe you, Mr. M., remember our conversation. I don’t know how you felt, but for me some points were extremely important. You will probably deny the first one, but I am convinced that you received false advice while you were taking it. deciding whether to get vaccinated or not. And that’s why you made the wrong conclusions. Secondly, you probably felt abandoned by politics and society, “the doctor wrote, reaching an important conclusion:” The common sense of our society in terms of the pandemic and the measures against it. Instead of fighting Kovid together, we are using Kovid to fight each other. “
The doctor is convinced that at one point society simply went astray. And he self-critically admits that he is part of this mistake because he has not been active enough in dialogue with people on the other side. “Didn’t I make too many clever statements? Didn’t I ask too many questions about the approach to this pandemic, even though I don’t have more knowledge and answers than many others? And am I not pointing fingers at people who are actually do they do the same as me? We all blamed each other, instead of learning from each other, trying to figure out together where we went wrong. “
“And then your eyes betrayed that you realized”
In his letter to the patient M., the doctor also reflects on the responsibility of the terminally ill person to those who remain after him. Is it moral to simply say that your eventual death is your personal problem, the doctor asks. I asked you how you would feel if you turned out to die from Kovid-19. And you answered me relatively quickly, “Well, I’m going to die that much.” clear. ” In his letter, the doctor emphasizes that every dying person is a great loss for their loved ones and causes great sadness – so we can not just say “Well, I will die so much”, especially when it comes to a completely unnecessary death. Then I said to you: imagine that you are sitting on a hospital bed, and in it lies your son, who has made the same decision as you now – unvaccinated on the verge of death. Do you remember? (…) Then your eyes betrayed how did you realize at that very moment that one is responsible for one’s loved ones, a responsibility that stems from the fear and anxiety of losing a loved one. Isn’t that essential for families, for friendships? “
“I feel helpless. It’s painful for a doctor.”
The doctor went on to write: “I wanted to share with you my thoughts while you were in the hospital bed. I wanted to know if I was on the right track or if I was just a bad medic in the clothes of an even worse philosopher. Bad because you were breathing harder and harder and we had to put you back in the intensive care unit, and there you ended up dying very quickly, despite the doctors’ efforts. I feel helpless and very painful for a doctor. I don’t understand your decision you don’t get vaccinated, although that would certainly prevent you from dying unnecessarily. “
“Today, a few days after your death, I already know: I would seek dialogue with you again. And I want us, as people and doctors, to continue to make contact with those who find no other way out of this horrific pandemic.” in addition to taking and accepting the risk of an unnecessary and premature death “- concludes the doctor’s letter published in the weekly” The Zeit “.
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