I was again on-call this last weekend, and to say that it was busy is an understatement. We have not seen this many COVID patients in the hospital right now, ever since this pandemic started early this year. The health-care system is really stretched out thin.

There are members of the medical staff that had contracted the virus, and I know some of our hospitalists had come down with the illness, most likely getting it from the very patients that we care for. There was even a colleague that got so sick and he became our patient in the ICU. Scary times indeed.

But I have a few days off since my last weekend call. I have sufficient time to unwind and recover. We need to take care of ourselves first so we can take care of others, right?

This morning, as I was out for my 3-mile run around our neighborhood, taking advantage of the out-of-season relatively warm weather, I happened to see this (photo below):

I don’t know who Parker is, nor what illness he has. But it put a smile in my face to know that even in these times that we cannot be physically there for somebody due to this pandemic and the mandate of social distancing, yet we can still show in one way or another that we care. We are all in this together.

Stay safe everyone!