Strength, Sacrifice, and Sequestering in Philadelphia

Awed and appreciative of all the personal sacrifices that medical professionals in the OB-GYN field are making in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, we are spotlighting Dr. Lauren Jenkins as an extraordinary example in these extraordinary times.

Ever since the onslaught of COVID-19 in Philadelphia, life has become nearly unrecognizable for Dr. Lauren Jenkins. Like the other doctors in her OB-GYN practice, Lauren now works three consecutive days of 12-hour shifts, providing care for her pregnant patients and delivering babies at Pennsylvania Hospital in downtown Philadelphia. The next three days are devoted to telemedicine or office visits, followed by three days on back-up call. This new system was designed to limit the number of essential healthcare workers in the hospital being exposed to the virus at a given time.

By the end of each long day, Lauren feels like the bridge of her nose is bruised from wearing a mask all day. She sheds her hospital garments as soon as she walks through the door and drops them onto the concrete floor of her “COVID Corner,” which she appreciates for its sterile simplicity. But the place she returns to after work is not her comfortable home and she is not greeted by her loving husband and joyful two-year-old twins. Instead, Lauren has chosen to live in a lonely Airbnb a few blocks from her hospital. How Lauren came to be in this situation is an astounding tale of self-sacrifice and perseverance.

When an anesthesiologist in her group tested positive for COVID-19, Lauren found out a full week after she had worked side by side with him in surgery for nine hours. At the time, the coronavirus surge seemed like a distant threat and her practice hadn’t yet come across any infected patients. Lauren was living at home with her family in Voorhees, NJ, snuggling her boys at night and sharing a bed with her husband. But in that moment when she learned of her potential exposure, everything changed.

Lauren’s identical twin boys, Pierce and Ashton, were born three months prematurely in 2017. The two of them spent months in the NICU and their mother did not miss a single day at their side. In his first year of life, Ashton had five surgeries and was diagnosed with EoE, a chronic disease of the esophagus. Soon after the twins crossed the milestone of their first year and things seemed to be looking up, Lauren’s husband Jay was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer.

All of the sudden, Jay had to quit his physically demanding job, which was a tough blow for him mentally, and their household was reduced to one income. After an aggressive round of radiation and chemotherapy this past fall, Jay’s tests have remained stable as far as his cancer is concerned. The side effects of his treatment have been debilitating, though, causing a large ulcer in his esophagus and a cardiomyopathy [meaning his heart only works half as well as it should].

Lauren mentions these hardships without dramatization. She reflects on the irony of her husband’s condition, given her own father died from the exact same type of cancer four years prior to her husband’s diagnosis. She is even able to find humor in the fact that her son Pierce feels left out because his brother and father have matching feeding tubes.

After everything that they had done to keep Jay as healthy as he can be, discovering potential COVID exposure and waiting in self-quarantine for her test results was too much for Lauren to bear. The thought that she had inadvertently exposed Jay or their sons to something deadly was terrifying. When her results came back negative, Lauren and Jay sat in bed weighing the risks and benefits of her continuing to live at home throughout the coronavirus crisis. They knew that if Jay ended up getting sick and it was ultimately Lauren’s fault, she would carry that guilt for the rest of her life. Living apart from her family was the right thing to do, and so on March 25th, Lauren moved out.

“Not working was not an option.”

Given her family’s compromised health, Lauren’s employer offered her the option of being pulled from the front lines and staying restricted to the office and telemedicine. But Lauren felt very conflicted since she herself is not at an increased risk, whereas some of her medical partners are older or have pre-existing conditions. Showing an unwavering work ethic, Lauren couldn’t imagine sitting on the sidelines while decades-older colleagues continued to work. In spite of the impact on their family life, Lauren and Jay agreed that she couldn’t leave her team behind.

Overcoming so many personal obstacles in the past three years has made Lauren tough. Even so, this separation from her family has been especially difficult and two weeks have felt like an eternity. Those hard times in the past have taught her what she needs to do for self-care: exercise when she has the energy, meditate every day, and pray. She also has a very close network of friends with whom she checks in over Zoom and social apps. Though Lauren has had a rare cry while unburdening on loved ones, she tries not to think about everything that’s happening in weeks or months, but takes each day as it comes.

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to go back home until the health crisis subsides. Otherwise all this time away from them would be in vain.”

A self-admitted germaphobe (since long before it became trendy), Lauren wonders if she has managed to escape the clutches of the coronavirus because of her obsessive hygiene. The day she worked with the infected anesthesiologist she remembers lending her pen to someone and then immediately scrubbing it with a bleach wipe. Prior to moving out, she had always wiped down her hospital shoes with