University of North Carolina Athletics
GoHeels Exclusive: Walger on the Front Lines in Massachusetts
July 29, 2020 | Men's Lacrosse, Featured Writers
By Pat James, GoHeels.com
From the moment the coronavirus pandemic started sweeping across the country in March, it's brought back memories for some of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s.
That's certainly been the case for former North Carolina men's lacrosse player Mike Walger, who completed his bachelor's degree in 1993 and then enrolled in the UNC School of Medicine. But not even that crisis, Walger says, was quite like this one.
"This is hitting much closer to home in terms of having to have everyone stay at home and be safe and quarantine and those types of things," said Walger, an emergency medicine specialist at North Shore Medical Center's Salem Hospital (NSMCSH) in Salem, Massachusetts. "So, it's a whole lot different (from the AIDS epidemic).
"I felt the tipping point was really happening with those first couple of cases in California, where people were getting it and the medical folks, the doctors and epidemiologists, in California didn't have any idea how those cases were being transmitted. And I was like, 'This is something that's going to be pretty devastating to our world and our country.'"
Walger, however, is doing his best to ensure it isn't, at least in Salem.
Few counties in the U.S. have been more affected by the coronavirus than Essex County, Massachusetts, which has reported at least 16,952Â cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the NSMCSH, Walger said he and his colleagues have treated several community patients. The hospital has also fed many patients to Massachusetts General Hospital and the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Among the biggest challenges Walger said he's faced while caring for patients has been figuring out how to practice social distancing. Another change to his day-to-day life has come in the form of logging into an app each morning and answering a list of questions about his health.
But no matter how different things are now or how many potential reasons he and his colleagues could have for feeling down, they've stayed positive.
"I think we're a group of people who are fun-loving and supportive of each other, and we do a good job of trying to smile and keep each other upbeat and be human," Walger said. "That's been key, whether you're working with the nurses and the doctors, just keeping a positive attitude about things. Even when it's tough and you're having a hard day, that's the way to do it."
In many ways, that approach comes from his time on the men's lacrosse team.
"Being a student-athlete, you really have to learn how to budget your time and be able to know what is important and what's not important and be able to spend time on those things," Walger said. "I think being a student-athlete helped me to value being well-rounded and being able to keep myself in mental and physical shape. And that helped me whether I was in undergrad, whether I was in medical school, whether I was in residency and now as an attending physician in the middle of this crisis."
While much has already been learned about the virus, Walger said the scientific understanding of it is still evolving. For that reason, he asks Americans to practice patience.
"With other diseases, whether you have bacterial pneumonia or whether you have a skin infection, we know how to treat those," Walger said. "Those have been well-researched. We know how to treat them, we know how to test for them and we know what medicines work for them. But with COVID-19, it's still evolving. …
"I think the most important things people can do to prevent the spread of this virus are to wear a mask and social distance and keep themselves healthy. And if you do those things, then hopefully the medical community can come up with better treatments and better vaccines for this virus and make this world safer for all of us."