Dr Shahid Rasool is an ENT and head and neck surgeon, working as Assistant professor in a medical college.

Being an ENT surgeon, Dr Shahid recalls the first wave of COVID – 19 to be a very scary situation because India was late in detecting and researching the pandemic which first started in China.

Dr Shahid was scared to contact corona every time a patient visited him because the symptoms with which his patients came to visit him were related to the upper respiratory tract like loss of smell, sore throat and fever which were also the symptoms for Corona and hardly anyone at that time was following the etiquettes of sneezing, coughing and social distancing .

While the first wave was slow and under control with a smaller number of patients, it was the second wave which took all the doctors including shahidOrl by surprise. The number of patients in the second wave was rapid and beyond control which led to the exhaustion of hospital beds and oxygen cylinders.

Dr Shahid as Ent surgeon described there was an “epidemic in pandemic“ of black fungus cases (mucormycosis) in the ongoing pandemic in the second wave. So there was double pressure which led to a situation of collapse in healthcare facilities.

He remembers how dozens of patients had to sacrifice their sight as there was no option then to remove their infected eyes with black fungus to save their lives.

Dr Shahid had to do tracheostomy surgeries for the severe patients who were on ventilators for respiratory support in ICU.
Every time Dr Rasool went to perform such life-saving operations of the respiratory tract in such severely ill and positive cases during the second wave, he thought this might be his last surgery and it felt like a threatening experience of walking on fire.

He recalls his most haunting experience.

To be Continued......