Paris (AFP)

Practitioner in a hospital in the Paris region, on the front line for treating patients affected by the coronavirus, an anesthesiologist-resuscitator delivers, on condition of anonymity, every day for AFP since the beginning of the crisis and for the last times this Friday, the summary of his day in the middle of a health crisis.

- Thursday, May 7 -

Just two months ago, when we were starting to talk more and more about the coronavirus in the Paris region, we were gathered in this small room of staff of our resuscitation service, crowded next to each other as often, to discuss our strategy for creating a covid unit.

We are developing a schedule where everyone would do a "covid week" until the end of April. Nobody really believes it. No one can imagine what will happen. Everyone is smiling and everyone still thinks it's a matter of a few weeks, that we will go on vacation in May or June.

We do not believe it so much that on Saturday evening, I am at the restaurant with my family without even knowing that a few hours later, these same restaurants were going to close their doors for an unknown period.

And there things are linked. The same evening, I am asked to come in reinforcement on Sunday for our Covid unit which opened in the evening. First I have some chills. A mixture of "excitement" and pride in being able to participate in this war which is beginning. And very quickly a few tears of anguish. (...)

In two months, we were able and forced to transform our hospital in depth. (...) In two months, we discovered incredible personalities. People who came from nowhere or simply from the other end of France, nurses, doctors, nursing assistants, came to lend us a hand for a few weeks. Admirable people ... (...)

Two months of almost constant presence in the hospital. Sometimes up to ten resuscitators required on call each night. The first weeks were very trying. It calmed down a bit afterwards. Two months later, we are physically tired, for sure, and sometimes mentally exhausted. (...)

This crisis will remain etched in us. Because of its scale, its gravity, what it asks us to achieve in intensive care and its share of unknowns.

No doctor in France in intensive care is trained to practice such medicine. A risk avoidance medicine more than a profit-seeking medicine, a medicine of interpretations and extrapolations more than a medicine based on evidence, a sometimes experimental medicine, a medicine of despair more than an optimistic medicine, a doubts medicine ...

Monday morning, when people return to work, stores reopen, traffic resumes, the noise level of Parisian streets increases significantly, our daily lives will not change.

We will be staying with a few Covid patients in intensive care. We will continue to develop plans for the coming weeks. We will continue to care for our patients. And we will continue to learn, day after day, to live with this virus without waiting for the official end of this crisis which may never happen. (...)

My last thoughts of this story will go to the patients and their loved ones. These patients who also fought day after day against the virus. These patients to whom we have not always been able to offer the best medicine that we would have liked to bring them.

These patients who were sometimes very young, too young to be in intensive care and succumb to the virus. Relatives who have been forced to agree to receive news only by phone. Most often, extremely understanding and grateful. These people who often could not accompany their loved one towards the end.

I will keep in mind for a long time these people who have not stopped thanking us, while we were only doing our work.

And this first patient I welcomed in March in this new covid unit to whom I announced that he had coronavirus. He said to me, "This is serious doctor". I replied: "We are going to fight". I was one of the last people he spoke to ...

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