It’s a month now that I am doing online video consultations for my patients. Since I deal with chronic diseases, and my consultations involve counselling and dealing with reports to a large extent, I find video consultations quite useful. In fact since they are “at home” both literally and metaphorically, the connect can be quite good. Instead of patient’s chair, they are sitting in their sofas or working desks…the conversations are easy.

The lockdown has impacted people differently. One of my really busy patients who used to travel to New York twice a week, all his meals were outside and he had no time to exercise. He was on multiple anti diabetic medications and high dose of insulin. Now he is at home, since there is not much to do, he walks around, eats at home. He has lost 8kg weight and insulin dose is now one-fourth of what he was taking; the requirement seems to be going down everyday. Now he has a completely new lifestyle, which I hope he will continue atleast partially later as well.

However there was another woman, who had prediabetes. The diet pattern has changed completely for two reasons. She tends to eat more now, with extra sweets and fresh vegetables were not available for sometime, because she was in red zone. She has newly developed diabetes in this month. Hopefully, she will be able to take control of her lifestyle and eating pattern gradually. We talked at length about small steps to be initiated towards healthier eating patterns.

Some patients however are deprived of urgent medical care especially in remote areas. I know of one such patient who has recently undergone kidney transplant, had abdominal pain and poor appetite. He was not hospitalised in his city, he became sick and couldn’t survive. There is a growing concern regarding increased non-covid mortality at home due to poor access to critical care. The balance is tight and in an attempt to reduce covid19 mortality, we can’t neglect non-covid emergencies. Do visit hospital when needed. For routine care, almost all doctors are now giving online consultations. So please avail that facility. The routine care is also to reduce the need for urgent admissions. So take good care of your diabetes, do not miss any of your medications for diabetes, hypertension, heart, kidney etc. Take care of your diet and exercise regularly. Health is preventing viral infection, but also taking care overall.