It was Thanksgiving last week, in America that is always celebrated with good food, including turkey. But at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas, things were very different this year. There, Chief Physician Joseph Varon was busy on his 251st day in a row. He worked continuously through the corona, and that evening saw one of his infected patients suddenly cry.
That is not possible
“Why are you crying?” he asked the older man.
“I want to go to my wife”, was his answer. And that was not possible, because the man is infected and the rules in the hospital are strict to prevent infections.
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“Then I grabbed him,” says Joseph via his webcam to CNN. “But I didn’t know I was going to be photographed.” At the time, there was a news photographer in the hospital, Go Nakamura, who made a photo report about the struggle that hospital staff and patients have to fight.
The man continued to cry. Joseph held on to him for a while. The photographer continued to take pictures.
So difficult
“It’s so hard for those patients,” says Joseph. “You are alone, you feel isolated. Some patients even try to escape, recently one through a window. They really want to leave.”
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According to Joseph, this photo shows how desperate some patients are. “I felt sad about this man’s situation. I stay at the patient’s bedside, I talk to them, I hold their hand. But sometimes we have so many patients that we can’t always do this for everyone. “
The man is now doing well. Joseph hopes the man can leave the hospital at the end of the week.
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