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Even before Dr. Dawnelle Topstad touched down in northern Italy on April 9, the reality of COVID-19 went from her head to her heart.
The 16-year-old boy sitting next to her on the flight to Frankfurt at first looked like any young person engrossed in a video game on his phone.
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Eventually, however, the teen revealed that he was flying home to Germany from his high school exchange program to attend the funeral of his father, who had just died from COVID-19.
“That really struck me,” said Topstad, a general surgeon in Calgary, who does a lot of medical contract work in Canada’s north.
“In your head you recognize that thousands of people had died from this virus but until it affects someone you know or someone that you’re in direct contact with, often it’s hard to have that knowledge be felt by your heart,” said Topstad.
“That was my first reality check that this is a significant pandemic. There was a kind of a solemn feeling around you on the plane — a sense of seriousness,” she said.
