Today I have been in self-quarantine for almost nine weeks, parallel but completely separate from the pandemic.

Each day, I wake up and read about the virus, mostly on medical websites, but like the rest of the world we are all starting with the same naïve level of knowledge about this unique pathogen. No two people in any family, town or career are affected in the same way by what seems to be a global reboot.

Here is a story from my front line.

Although I am a doctor, known to some of you from my 20 years working on Martha’s Vineyard, I have been experiencing this pandemic as a patient. Without going into details, in early February I had surgery for a slowly growing tumor that was putting pressure on one of my cranial nerves causing half my face to contract into a spasm. One problem led to another after surgery; I developed meningitis and was laid out flat for almost three weeks with more pain in my head and neck than I ever imagined possible.

I am now a week out from my fourth surgery, trying to heal the leakage of brain and spinal fluid from my nose and ear.

During these past two months of self-isolation, as I try to avoid a second bout of meningitis, I have entered the medical system as a patient rather than caregiver. I am a relatively solitary person to start with, and the high-dose steroids I was put on pushed me further into self-isolation, moodiness and not infrequent depression.

As my recovery spirals up and down, I struggle to have hope. The dark and vibrating pain is balanced by bliss when the pain is not there that day, or at that moment. I appreciate my family and friends who have reached out to support me. But I often decline their calls or texts, not wanting to talk about what I consider a weakness of my body and spirit to heal my own personal plague.

I suspect that what I am going through, to a large degree, is what the whole world is going through right now. We have hope that we will survive along with our family and neighbors. We have the physical pain of atrophy from sitting and waiting. We have the emotional pain of helplessness. We wonder whether our immune system and spirit will survive or become a victim of this assault.

A resident of Chilmark for 20 years, I practiced yoga and meditation for many years with Megan Grennan, who led a group of devoted students. Today the Island community is privileged to have perhaps the highest number of yoga teachers per capita probably in the world. Along with meditation comes the concept that positive thoughts can heal and negative, depressing vibrations feed bad outcomes.

This is not a new concept to me as a fisherman. Going out at night to Chappy with Ed Amaral, a derby hall-of-famer who took me under his fishing tutelage many years ago, he taught me about having a positive attitude even if there are no birds, no slicks and a storm has likely driven the fish into deeper water. He told me repeatedly, and I learn from repetition, that as long as there is water we have a chance. In this pandemic, there is air all around us, but some will lose the ability to breathe.

Can positive thoughts really affect the outcome? My experience with my own complications might argue against it, but maybe not. My life is changing in ways that will be long lasting even after I heal and the Earth sheds this virus. I now talk to my 90-year-old dad in San Francisco and my brother in Napa and sister in Los Angeles almost every day on the phone. I used to have a brief phone or email conversation with them once every month or two at the most.

I talk to my nephew, Adam, who came out on the positive side of brain cancer treatment when he was in high school and is now finishing his junior year online at UCLA. He wants to go into medicine, and I talk to him about naturopathic healing because he is an old soul and I know he can be a healer. There are few avenues in conventional medicine that allow a practitioner to use compassion along with science to heal.

My wife is my rock when I am unable to be independent. She resists my attempts to fall into depression and complete self-isolation. She holds me up above the surface of the ocean, so I am still breathing.

My hat (surgical cap) is off to the incredible nurses, food service workers, patient transporters and other hospital staff who have taken care of me in these difficult times with true compassion. How many are voluntarily there versus being mandated by hospital administration to work or be fired? They did not sign up for wartime jobs, putting their lives and the lives of their families at risk. They are the true unnamed heroes.

I left Martha’s Vineyard in 2014, and retired from working full-time in the burn unit in Seattle three years ago. If I wasn’t struggling myself, I hope that I would have offered my services to return voluntarily to help out in this crisis. But it is way too self-admiring to say that I definitely would have.

Just before my own surgery, I returned from two weeks in Nepal working with burn patients and burn caregivers as I have for the past three years. Each day, two or three patients would die, mostly older women whose clothes ignited while they were kneeling down facing away from open fires warming themselves during the cold village winter. It seems like it would be so easy to prevent these deaths with education, less flammable clothing, barriers around the fires, and, eventually but long time coming, electricity.

The coronavirus is much more of an enigma, and has no preference for economic status, religion or race. We are still identifying its virulence and mutability, the first step in finding a solution. It will and already has changed the world and how humans interact with each other. It will likely become a factor when young people decide whether to pursue a career in nursing or medicine.

When enough people in our neighborhood, our nation and our world are touched by the death of a loved one, I wonder if that might help persuade us to oppose political and economic leaders who value money over life and who pillage the earth and nature.

Putting aside for a moment the tragic deaths, let us hope that the lessons learned of fellowship and compassion, courage and hope will be among the positive outcomes of this catastrophe. Let us pray that economic capitalism and hubris will be illuminated yet again as false gods.

Dr. Gary Fudem is a retired plastic surgeon who formerly had a longtime practice on Martha’s Vineyard.