In Memoriam

IN MEMORIAM

Dr. Lorna M. Breen, the medical director of the emergency department 
at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital,
who treated many COVID-19 patients 
before contracting the virus, recuperating and 
returning to the service of her patients,
died by suicide on Sunday, April 26, 2020.
“She tried to do her job and it killed her,” 
said her father, Dr. Philip C. Breen. 
“She was truly in the trenches of the front line…
Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was.
She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.”

This column is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Lorna M. Breen, a hero.

It’s sad how quickly people forget about you,
until they want something from you again.
Source Unknown

Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes will host a ticker tape parade honoring health care workers and first responders as New York City’s first major event after the coronavirus crisis has passed.

Perhaps. Perhaps. 

But remember May 7, 1985?

Twenty-five thousand (25,000) Vietnam War veterans, including nineteen Medal of Honor recipients, marched across the Brooklyn Bridge and down Broadway in what was the largest parade in the City’s history. Those vets received the parade they deserved -ten years after the last American returned home from that war. 

Consider this: More U.S veterans committed suicide between 2008 and 2017 than the number of U.S. soldiers who died during the entire Vietnam War, according to the Department of Veteran Affairs in a September 2019 report. More than 60,000 veteran suicides in a span of just ten years – compared to 58,000 fatalities in a war that last from 1955 to 1975.

We know that ticker tape parades – small and large, in major cities and small towns – will not begin to soften the trauma our nation’s Corona Virus heroes experienced day after day, week after week for months. 

The ICU/trauma surgeon who reported on a network evening news from a Miami hospital that he had lost six – yes, six – patients to the virus in just one shift and would still be back in the unit the next day.

The nurses who knew all about the family of their sick coworker, had enjoyed countless dinner breaks with her, shared laughs and tears and then could not save her as she became another number in the daily statistical reports.  

Chaplains who, patient after patient after patient from dawn to dusk, must administer “this sacred anointing” through gloved hands rather than with the soul-healing of skin to skin touch and the sacred words of God’s comfort.

The immigrant members of countless hospital ICU janitorial staffs who must return night after night to their crowded apartments worried that after cleaning-up so much urine, so many blood- soaked bandages, and infinite quantities of vomit and feces and pray desperately that they will not be bringing the invisible killer home to their kids.

The social workers who spend hours – in at least one case thirty hours – standing at bedsides holding cellphones and Ipads so that the families of the dying can speak to them through their last breaths and pray them into the hands of a gentle and loving God.

Black and Hispanic and immigrant – documented and undocumented – men and women working for minimal wages without paid time off or sick leave if they or their children become infected in nursing homes that have – collectively – seen tens of thousands of deaths and who live in fear for their own lives and the lives of their elderly parents or young children.

Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and firefighters and ambulance drivers who have been running triple and quadruple and quintuple their normal of emergency calls and are exhausted beyond words. 

As a nation, we have learned that the first responders who rushed into the World Trade Center and spent days and weeks digging through smoldering rubble suffered physical problems that resulted in early, painful deaths and emotional traumas and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that destroyed too many lives and lead to addictions and suicides. 

So, NYC and cities, towns and villages will throw tickertape parades, perhaps honor doctors and nurses and first responders at halftimes of football and seventh innings of baseball games, and someone will make a tabletop album of some of their portraits.

And six months, a year, three or five years from now those long-forgotten surviving professionals and hospital staffers will suffer their own private agonies of PTSD, endless sadnesses, griefs unresolved because not only could they not save their friends but could not go to their funerals, could not mourn together or comfort each other. There was no time. And social distancing might save other lives. 

America’s health care workers are dying. 
In some states, medical staff account for as many as 20% 
of known coronavirus cases. They tend to patients in hospitals,
treating them, serving them food and cleaning their rooms. 
Others at risk work in nursing homes or are employed as 
home health aides.
Some of them do not survive the encounter. 
Many hospitals are overwhelmed and some workers 
lack protective equipment or suffer from underlying health conditions 
that make them vulnerable to the highly infectious virus.
“Lost On The Frontier” – Kaiser Health News – 4/10/2020

Here’s an idea. Abandon the proposed “Space Force” that will cost an estimated $2 billion – that’s $2,000,000,000 – in its first five years and involve more than 15,000 space-related personnel scheduled to be transferred from existing roles - and invest those bucks into a Mental Health Force. That same SF will cost an additional half-billion - $500,000,000 a year in headquarters construction, education, training, doctrine and personnel management centers.

A Mental Health Force would – like ROTC programs - fully or significantly underwrite undergraduate and graduate students specializing in Clinical Psychology, Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW), grade and high school counselor programs, and as addictions, childhood development and geriatric mental health specialists  – provided recipients committed to four or five or six years of public service upon completion of their studies. Undergraduate recipients would intern as summer school teachers in Native American and educationally underserved communities – serving as role models a la Teach For America or mental health domestic Peace Corps volunteers. All the while preparing to provide the mental health services that will be needed by veterans of America’s Afghan and Iraq wars and on-going battles against the Corona virus in all its iterations.

Each year, the nation’s five service academies graduate approximately 4,000 young men and women. (Yup! Five! Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines. Bet you forgot the last one.) Within six years – for Master’s level counselors; eight for doctoral level, depending on their degree – the United States could be graduating equal numbers of Public Service Mental Health Professionals. Like those 4,000 or so service graduates, they could be commissioned with salaries equivalent to the academies’ graduates and, after completion of their required service, continue as professionals in service to the nation – with increasing rank and salary – or enter the world of private practice.

Such a proposal would not require new campuses or the expenses of any of the five academies. America’s colleges and universities and professional training schools would each simply expand their entering classes by one or two dozen students a year. 

One day, months from now, the nation will throw tickertape parades and celebrations to honor the “front line heroes” of the pandemic war. Then, just as quickly as they have  forgotten the heroes of WWII, Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq, too many Americans will forget those heroes as they battle their own hidden wars against PTSD, grief and depression. 

If we truly want to honor these heroes, it is time to ditch a multi-billion-dollar Space Force and develop a national Mental Health Force that will save generations. 

If you find real value in this idea, we encourage you to share this blog with friends and send it to the offices of your senators and Congressional representatives. 

Lorna M. Breen, M.D., medical director of the emergency department 
at New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital.
Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, 
and let your perpetual light shine upon her.
May her soul and the souls of all the faith departed rest in peace.
Amen.