A phone call today produced a remarkable statement from one of my North Texas sources, a fellow I have gotten to know well while working as a freelance reporter for the Farmersville Times.
He is recovering from pneumonia induced by the COVID-19 virus.
He is grateful to be alive. Indeed, there was a lilt in his voice I hadn’t heard before today.
My source wanted to make a critical point: He said the medical personnel to tended to him are “among the very best.” They are performing heroic work under trying conditions, he said.
I did not press this fellow about precisely where he had been hospitalized. His feelings, though, about the medical personnel who cared for him could apply all across the spectrum.
My goodness, we hear stories of doctors and nurses stressing out as they care for those cannot touch their loved ones. The coronavirus isolates the sick from the healthy. Those who are hospitalized by the COVID virus become the exclusive charges of the medical professionals who care for them.
So, these folks step up. They become “surrogate loved ones” for those who depend on them to bring them back to good health or to save their lives.
As my friend noted as well, they are answering the call to do what they can under the most trying circumstances one can imagine.
“They need to know how much we care about them,” my friend said. I assured him that I would use this blog as a forum to do that very thing.
So … that is what I am doing here.
These men and women have earned our eternal gratitude for the work they are doing. They save lives every day. How much more heroic than that can it get?