08/08/2025
I had experienced Covid in Florida and left just as the state was starting to emerge from the deep chaos.
I moved home to Trinidad with my little family, hopeful and relieved, but what I was entering was a country that had not yet met Covid in the same way.
I came home looking forward to maternity leave, planning to take a full year off from clinical medicine after 14 years of nonstop care.
I needed to rest. To reset.
That was the promise...
Then Covid hit Trinidad.
And I had the strange, surreal experience of living through two versions of the same storm.
Once again, patients needed me.
And once again, I answered the call.
There was resentment, I wonāt lie.
I had made a promise to myself, to my family... to stop, just for a little while.
But there it was again: the choice between them and me. Between family and duty. Between rest and responsibility.
While the world debated what was ārealā and what wasnāt; arguing over politics, conspiracy, vaccines, masks, I didnāt have the luxury of opinions. I had patients in beds, fighting for breath. There was no time to argue, only time to act.
While the world posted banana bread and home workouts, we were trying to save lives while navigating short resources, long hours, and the noise outside the hospital walls. It was a quiet kind of heartbreak. The kind you donāt get to talk about because thereās always another patient waiting.
And then, there was the judgment.
People angry because they didnāt like the rules, or didnāt believe in the science. Many lashed out; at me, at the system, at anything. But I wasnāt trying to be right. I was just trying to help.
Surge after surge, the medical community gave their all.
Even when no one clapped anymore.
Even when our sacrifice felt invisible.
This carried on for longer than anyone could have anticipated.
It wasnāt until years later I was on a beach in Tobago, cocktail in hand, finally exhaling,
when one of my patients walked up to me.
āDoctor, if it wasnāt for you, Iād be dead.ā
And there she sat, with her entire family.
That was the moment I knew
I made the right decision.
But it came with its costs.
The cost of broken promises to myself.
The cost of time I canāt get back with my new-born.
The cost of carrying everyoneās grief, while still holding my own.
But even now, I wouldnāt undo it.
Because while I had given so much of myself,
I had also kept so many others
Alive. Connected. Heard.
