A Weary Doctor’s Year of Work and Worry

Author: Notre Dame Magazine

Alicia Lopez Warlick ’97 is an anesthesiologist in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has spent much of the past year treating COVID patients, and feels fortunate to have stayed healthy and remained on the caregiving side of the doctor-patient relationship. The required precautions of personal protective equipment made 2020, ironically enough, the healthiest year of her life. But the constant stress of the experience — the risk of infection, for herself, her husband and child — also altered her priorities and magnified her appreciation for the gift of health.