I was asked to join a team of four physical therapists who had volunteered to work with COVID patients in a hospital in Trecenta, in the Veneto region of Italy. Right away I thought it would be a good opportunity to help people who were going through a life-threatening illness all alone.
In my own small way, I could also live together with other healthcare workers a very challenging professional — and human — experience, and try to bring a glimmer of light into an environment where no one would want to be.
First, we had a few days of preparation, with training sessions, compiling treatment protocols, and course studies. That was when the fear began. Fear of contagion, of not making it, of changing my eating habits, of all the unknowns.
During those days I read the April Word of Life that says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (Jn 20:29). I had to believe and trust. I had to believe without seeing. I had to believe in love and dive into the dark. And so, little by little I passed from fear to its opposite, that is, love.
The moment arrived when we had to begin our work. We entered all the COVID wards, from the intensive care units to where patients were recovering and those with patients getting ready for discharge.
We immediately realized that our biggest challenge was to breathe while geared up in a bulky hazard suit. Oxygen was running short, and all the workers were moving slowly to save energy. There was no way to maintain the long hours of work at the usual pace of a hospital ward.
To recognize one another, we had to write our name on our outfit, which some would embellish with a lovely drawing.
I then began my direct contact with patients and the rehabilitation treatments; they were all held in tightly sealed hospital rooms. I witnessed the physical, but also psychological, suffering, due to the total isolation from the outside world. No one and nothing entered.
Some elderly patients couldn’t even hold their cellphone. So one would understand the burst of joy whenever a family member called the doctor, who would then enter the room with a tablet to let the patient meet their family through video! Those moments were so moving, enveloping the entire healthcare team with deep emotion.
Since we were all collaborators in a state of emergency, the positive relationships among workers eased the work load. We would help one another whenever we saw a colleague having difficulty breathing and needing to take a seat and rest. We were partners in supporting one another with an encouraging phrase or word.
The patients wanted to talk despite the effort; they shared with me their agony in living a situation that seemed surreal and defying time. They spoke to me of their family, of memories that would often fade away, of their lives full of adventures and drama, of positive choices and values. After a few weeks of hospitalization, some of my patients lost their orientation, and so their hospital roommates would come to their aid and they, too, became my collaborators.
A patient saw me at times tired and breathless; he would generously invite me to take a seat, worrying more about me than himself.
A woman shared with me about her daughter, who would drive 50 miles to stay in the hospital parking lot and look at the window of her mother’s hospital room. She would stay there for 15 minutes, call and say, “Mom, I’m down here in the parking lot. I’m near you.” But it wasn’t possible to get together.
This morning a woman next to one of my patients shared her whole life with me. How much mourning and illness! It felt too much to take. Then she asked what she had ever done to deserve so much adversity in her life. At that point, I looked at her and tried to make her feel the love of God, who did not want to punish her for anything.
At a certain point during our conversation, I spoke to her of Jesus who, on the cross, also doubted. “If even he doubted, how much more can I, a mere human being?”
I spoke to her of Jesus Forsaken on the cross. When I left her room, one could breathe an air of sacredness — even without oxygen.
Many times, patients’ progress doesn’t happen as quickly as they would like, and they need support. As a physical therapist, out of all the healthcare workers, I spend the most time in direct physical contact with each patient. Every day, they wait for me together with all their hospital roommates. In these relationships, I see Jesus’ resurrection through the senses of the soul, without seeing it through the senses of the body.
Humanly speaking, I see a lot of suffering, and not only among patients. But in accepting this suffering, everything becomes clear. Everything makes sense, and the fact of being there as a volunteer helps me see my work in a dimension of unconditional self-giving. Physical fatigue is just sharing a bit of all that my patients experience.
