When COVID was just starting to make in roads into the U.S., my wife and I were just moving from Arizona back to my home state of Texas. My dad was in California visiting with my baby sister and while out there, he later got very sick with what we think was COVID (he had several of the hallmark symptoms of COVID but this was before there was a definitive test so we can't say with 100% certainty that it was the virus). Soon after we arrived in Texas, I guess five or six weeks, the state instituted its lock down. The last time I saw any family or friends was late January.
I started studying for the MCAT and preparing to apply to medical school while we were on lock down. I was also finishing my PhD during this time. The University of Missouri went on lockdown so I wasn't able to some key things face-to-face the way that I had hoped (i.e., comp exams, dissertation research, dissertation defense, and graduation) but my wife and I were more than willing to do what we had to do to stay safe and keep the people around us safe. I finally finished the PhD and had a successful medical school admissions cycle. Though. my wife and I lost a few friends to COVID, we were (and still are) fortunate to not lose any family. Throughout this whole time, we had good mental health or so we. thought.
I started medical school two weeks after I defended my dissertation, on July 12th. As you might imagine, everything has been face-to-face but we've been wearing N95s while on campus (class activities, in the library for studying, etc.) We've also had to undergo weekly COVID tests early on and in our first block, we had a significant COVID cluster so we had to move to online learning for a little over a week. The part of San Antonio that my medical school is located in is also one of the hardest hit zip in all of Texas so there is a fear, even though my wife and I are vaccinated and still mask up and socially distance as much as possible, of contracting COVID.
The worst part about all of this has been the arguments over the origins of COVID, vaccination, whose fault this is, etc. I have had a LOT Of arguments with family, mainly younger cousins who have a mistrust of anything government or older relatives who have the memories of the Tuskegee studies deeply embedded into they DNA. There have also been disagreements with classmates and faculty at my medical school who don't believe in mask wearing or vaccines. Then there have been the random idiots who have tried to pick fights because my wife and I choose to wear masks; there was a guy at our gym who used a racial slur at us on the way out because we were our masks while working out.
I came to a realization a few weeks back that the over year long home confinement, the fears that I've had over COVID, and all of the political/personal strife surrounding COVID has taken a toll on me that I hadn't been aware of. I was already burned out going into medical school (i.e., I'd just finished my dissertation and PhD) and dealing with all of this COVID uncertainty (for example, at my school, we're all required to be EMT certified so that we can start doing early clinical activities; my first clinical activity is supposed to be on 26-Dec but the agency could cancel due to COVID numbers) on top of. being a medical student has put me in a space where my mental health isn't what it was in 2019 and early 2020. Recently, I've decided to take a medical leave of absence to get my eyes taken care of (I have Kerataconus and need a new type of contact lens and it takes 3-6 months to get a good fit) and I'm going to use this time to also see a therapist. It feels like COVID is going to be with us for the long haul and while I don't know how its going to affect the rest of my medical education, its clear that there will be some kind of influence on it related to COVID. I want to make Sure that I am in a good place mentally to keep going.