TRUST THE PROCESS
By: Ailene Buelva-Martin, M.D.
I close my eyes as soon as my head touches the pillow. I open them soon thereafter like I did not sleep at all and take a deep breath and sigh, “Here we go again!” I silently look at my children beside me (five and two years old) with my heart full of prayers that never needed utterance. I tried to isolate from them when I go on COVID duty but that only lasted for a few weeks because the separation gave more anxiety on my children and of course, on me.
I need to drag myself up to go on COVID duties. My legs are heavy walking to the hospital. But I continue to wake up and show up! I have carried this verse with me: “Be strong and courageous for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” -Psalm 90. This verse goes through my head countless times as I make rounds in the COVID wards.
If only walls could talk, what heartbreaking stories she would tell. A silent witness to all the sobbing, the despair, the grief of patients dying alone with COVID and family members embracing them in their deathbed wearing the full PPE and touching them wearing gloves. An all too familiar scenario for doctors and nurses, yet, one sheds a tear hiding behind the goggles and PPEs.
I doff my PPEs, drenched in sweat, as you remove one by one the PPEs, you pray you did not get the virus and bring it to your family. But more than the virus, you carry with you all those pent up emotions you are not supposed to let others see because you are the doctor. And this needs to be addressed, because doctors are humans too.
I started collecting plants but I soon realized I do not have a green thumb and they died one by one. So I took up a brush and started painting and somehow, I got to release the emotions and stress by each stroke of the brush and turned it into art. I am very fond of cherry blossoms as they spark joy and give me happy memories when I see one.
The “Kidney Blossoms” was my first painting inspired by this.
