COVID Pandemic Journey through the Eyes of a Primary Care Physician

By Dennis H. Odie MD FACP

The journey begins with our daily life as primary care physicians suddenly devastated and upturned by a deadly pandemic affecting everything around us and all the people we serve.

Our modus operandi has suddenly changed overnight, and innovation becomes the order of the day to continue serving our patients and other loved ones.

The book tells you about the empathy of this primary care physician and the beautiful, strong doctor patient relationship in medicine.

It tells you about various treatment approaches employed by Primary physicians and the barriers we faced in treating covid patients and achieving our goals of primary and general health care during the pandemic. It gives you deep insight about the covid vaccines and other treatment for the covid virus.

The novel tells you about love of medicine and our patients with primary care physicians being the foundation of health care. It is a true story of physicians risking their lives to care for others. It also gives you information about past pandemics and anticipation of future ones.

Most of all this true story tells you about the strong relationship between this primary care doctor and his patients.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889605331

Book preview

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COVID Pandemic Journey through the Eyes of a Primary Care Physician

Dennis H. Odie, MD, FACP

Copyright © 2024 Dennis H. Odie, MD, FACP

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-88960-519-5 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88960-533-1 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Dear patients,

For the safety of other patients and our staff, please let us know if you are or have experienced the following:

Thank you.

Chapter 1

Reality

Chapter 2

The Medical Office

Chapter 3

The Beginning

Chapter 4

The Virus

Chapter 5

COVID-19 on the Move

Chapter 6

The Arrival of the Masking Era/The Arrival of Virtual Medicine/An Office Changer, Physical and Clinical

Chapter 7

Searching for Treatment and Answers to So Many Deaths and Sickness

Chapter 8

Help Is on the Way

Chapter 9

The COVID-19 Storm Continues

Chapter 10

COVID-19 Reality

Chapter 11

Beginning of Definitive treatment

Chapter 12

The Pandemic Continues

Chapter 13

More Treatment

Chapter 14

Long COVID-19

Chapter 15

We Are the Ultimate Physicians

About the Author

Dear patients,

For the safety of other patients and our staff, please let us know if you are or have experienced the following:

Fever

Cough

Sore throat

Flu-like symptoms

In contact with someone who has the above symptoms

Recent travel in last two weeks to China, South Korea, Iran, Brazil, India, or have traveled to state with high coronavirus numbers.

Thank you.

Chapter 1

Reality

Here in Baltimore, the virus continued to kill thousands of people. In New York City, during bright daylight hours, cops, firemen, and regular pedestrians were watching a man in his fifties jumped off a skyscraper about forty stories high as he was diagnosed with COVID-19 and decided to kill himself before the virus killed him. There was a loud thud when he landed on the sidewalk face down, and blood ran out from his white-colored shirt, making it a purple magenta-like color. His lifeless body was all contorted, and his limbs were all bent and twisted in various directions. His lifeless body was now a twisted bunch of dead flesh. People looking at his body felt all depressed and wondered what they could have done to prevent this tragedy. Is this real news or fake news as it is very difficult to tell? Does the virus affect your thinking? Does it eat your brains out? Does it make you go crazy, causing you to do strange things? Is this the work of the devil, or will this be the end of the world and would we all die? Multiple cases of COVID-19-related suicides were recorded all over the world.

Here in Baltimore, on the news on television while interviewing a patient, he was telling the announcer about the old man dying from COVID-19. He looked like a fish out of the water on the ground with his mouth open wide trying to catch a breath and his arms and legs moving in all directions as his body was moving up and down until he took his last breath and there was no more movement just a stiff lifeless carcass.

In the space of one month, the virus spread to over one hundred countries, killing thousands of people.

Chapter 2

The Medical Office

Our day usually begin by seeing patients at 8:30 a.m., and our last patient was scheduled at 5:00 p.m. We are located at the Seven Square Medical Center in East Baltimore County, Maryland. The building is one of three three-story buildings forming a horseshoe shape. We are on the second floor, above me is a lab corporation blood-draw specimen collection center, and below me is a pharmacy that does brisk business all day long. The pharmacy is run by a married couple with the wife being the pharmacist and the spouse as the manager. The building adjacent to mine has a cardiology practice, dental offices, physical therapists, radiology practice, and orthopedic practice among others.

The building opposite mine has an ENT office, gastroenterology, family practice, and other specialties. At the rear of our building, there is a huge urology practice. In my building, there are four primary care practices present, and they are all busy. All the practices that I just mentioned I know well, and they are wonderful physicians and very easy to work with. We would help each other whenever the need arises, including covering practices when necessary. Our parking lots are filled around 11:00 a.m., and the parking turnover is continuous until 5:00 p.m. Our neighborhood is usually very quiet as the office is in a peaceful part of Baltimore County in a residential housing area in the city of Rosedale. At the back of us, you can walk down to the only hospital in the East Baltimore County, the Franklin Square Medical Center, in ten minutes or you can drive in five minutes or less. Like I explained above, we have a good working and personal relationship with the physicians in our area, and we would help each other whenever the needs arise. Our good relationship extends to everyone in the local medical community and beyond.

In my office, overnight faxes, electronically sent records, reports, lab results, radiology results (including MRI, CT scans, ultrasound results, X-rays, mammograms, etc.), hospital admits, discharge summaries, and other consults from other consultant practices are all reviewed and downloaded in our electronic health record (EHR) system by my nurse manager and sent to all respective physicians and nurse practitioners in the office. Unread messages from the previous day are also sent back to front desk staff to file and or call the patients after reviewing. Our office is bombarded with phone calls as soon as the office opens until closing when we put on our answering service in the evening at 5:30 p.m. Drug representatives would make their rounds in office and brought samples of the latest and newest drugs on the market. These are, of course, the most expensive as they are new and patent was good for years.

Lunch was around twelve noon, but we were always late coming as patients tend to need more care prior to us eating. We may have a drug representative come in at lunch and present a new drug, which