A Trip to a Silent Hospital

Item

Title (Dublin Core)

Description (Dublin Core)

On July 18th 2020 in the late afternoon, I started experiencing some concerning not Covid-related symptoms and I made the decision to go to the Emergency Room. I’ve had chronic health issues all my life, so this wasn’t an unfamiliar experience. However, I’d been isolating since March and I was terrified of having to potentially go into a situation that was unknown in the middle of the pandemic. The things I remember most about the visit are how utterly desolate the places in the hospital felt, and how silent it was. I’m used to packed waiting rooms and constant noise. This visit was very different. After a brief screening in a large, mostly empty lobby with large barriers and protective measures in place, they assessed that I was not a potential COVID patient and sent me to a waiting room that I was alone in for most of my visit. There was no real chatter, mostly just silence, broken by the TV. The silence continued even back into the ER, where it seemed that the staff was spread thin. The most notable sounds were occasional low conversations and the sounds of medical equipment being moved around and the beeps and pulses. Even when evaluating me, while warm, the conversations sounded more terse and to the point. Everything moved more quickly. In some ways, it felt like being in an abandoned building. Everything was dark, silent, and empty in the areas where I was.

text story about a sensory experience (personal memory)

Date (Dublin Core)

July 18, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Morgan Lunsford

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Morgan Lunsford

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

text

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Education--Universities

English Healthcare

English Social Distance

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

hospital

silence

quiet

isolating

pandemic

desolate

emergency room

senses

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Sensory History

Hospital

Arizona

Tucson

Silence

Sounds

Collection (Dublin Core)

Latino(a/x) Voices

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history contribution to COVID-19 Archive

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

10/14/2020

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

10/16/2020

05/24/2022

Date Created (Dublin Core)

07/18/2020

Item sets

Covid 19

Arizona State University

This item was submitted on October 14, 2020 by Morgan Lunsford using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

Explore the Archives

Item