A Doctor or a Virus? On Becoming an Asian-American Doctor During the COVID-19 Pandemic

I am learning how to become a doctor in 2018. It’s my third year of medical school, and I am wearing a proud smile as I introduce myself as a “student doctor” and shake the patient’s hand. I start learning the art of medicine. Then, as I approach the end of my third year, whispers of a virus start to circulate. It begins with my family, warning me about the messages they received from WeChat from my family in China. The whispers become headlines and now and the headlines bring panic to the community.

During this time, I am at a family medicine practice in rural New Jersey. I still go to the rotation as usual, but now we get barraged with questions about this new virus. Then, I get assigned the task of phone triage when the office limits walk-ins. “I brought my family to a Chinese restaurant; do you think I could get the virus from the workers or was it in the food?”. I answer back in my crisp English; there is no hint of an accent despite Cantonese being my mother tongue. The weight of my skin feels extra heavy on the phone while I am answering her concerns.

The next day, I go to the office and immediately get asked to leave the room by a patient. Is it because I am a student or because of my Chinese-Vietnamese appearance? I try not to dwell too much on this thought as I head towards the exit. I have lived long enough to be able to manage my pangs of pain after racial targeting and microaggressions, but this interaction introduced a new anxiety. I worked for years to be given the opportunity to care for others, but now with the associations of Asian-Americans as the vector for disease, would my patients look at me as a doctor or a disease? I learned that same afternoon that students are removed from rotations due to the pandemic, and I spend the next weeks reading headlines of attacks on people who look like me and the spread of COVID-19.

I spend my day-to-day trying to hide my Asian features in the street to avoid words of blame and actions of hate. This does not prevent racial slurs hurled at me when I walk down the street or people spitting on me and calling me a virus spreader. Eventually, students get called to return to clinical duties. On my seven-block walk to the hospital from my home, I get statements of appreciation and hate. “Thank you for taking care of our sick” and “Go back to China!” are both said to me during my walk to work. It is an odd dichotomy of being celebrated and vilified within a 15-minute walk.

Now, I am in residency. I wear my skin with pride, but it has been considerably thickened from the pandemic. There is now this unspoken bond between Asian-American providers who when we speak about our pandemic experience since I am not alone in this experience. My community is not the first to be blamed for a disease and surely will not be the last. Am I the embodiment of disease or am I a healer? The answer to this question seems to differ depending on who gets asked.

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