Paola Seidel, August 28th, 2024
Title
Paola Seidel, August 28th, 2024
Description
Dr. Paola Seidel discusses her practice's transition to telemedicine during the Covid-19 pandemic, the pandemic's effects on her family, and Covid's lasting impacts on society.
Publisher
Detroit Historical Society
Rights
Detroit Historical Society
Language
en-US
Narrator/Interviewee's Name
Paola Seidel
Brief Biography
Dr. Seidel, specialist in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Brain Injury Medicine has practiced medicine in Metro Detroit since her graduation from Wayne State School of Medicine in 1991. During the pandemic, she lived at home in Troy, MI with her spouse and four of her five adult children.
Interviewer's Name
Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo
Date
8/28/2024
Interview Length
15:52
Transcription
Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo: I'm Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo. It's August 28th, 2024, and I'm here with. Please say your name.
Paola Seidel: Paola Seidel. P a o l a S e i d e l
DLT: Thank you. And where do you live?
PS: I live in Troy, Michigan.
DLT: How long have you lived there?
PS: About 25 years.
DLT: And have you lived elsewhere in Metro Detroit?
PS: I've lived in Clawson, Michigan.
DLT: When did you live there?
PS: I lived there for about a decade before moving to Troy.
DLT: And when did you first hear about Covid-19?
PS: Let's see. I was in Buffalo, taking care of some personal business, and my husband informed me that there was a significant risk of the border being closed and that I should get home quickly. I might have heard of it before then, but that's when I really began to pay attention to it.
DLT: And were you initially worried?
PS: No, I wasn't.
DLT: And when did that change? If it did.
PS: I think it was March 13th, I believe, when the border actually closed and things shut down. And I mean, I had heard about it in the news. I am a physician. I was aware of it, but I was really impacted when the nation began to shut down as well as the state.
DLT: And what did these initial impacts look like?
PS: Well, for me, it began a transition to a telemedicine platform. Certainly a lifestyle change, having all family members now living at home in one place and working in one place. Of course, all of the sanitization techniques that we had to use: the masking, the wiping down all surfaces, social distancing, all of the recommendations that were put out by the CDC.
DLT: And what was it like to switch to telemedicine?
PS: [Laughs] It was quite the challenge. I'm not— I’ve become a lot more technologically adept than I was prior to the pandemic. I think it's very hard to do an adequate telemedicine evaluation of a new patient, for example, when you really can't see very much of what's happening, and you certainly can't do a physical examination. And also the technological difficulties of people not being able to utilize a Zoom platform, for example. It's completely new to a patient, and my patients tend to have cognitive impairments. So it was particularly challenging.
DLT: And did working over telemedicine get easier as shutdowns continued?
PS: Oh, definitely. And it's now become an integrated part of my practice.
DLT: And when did your practice start opening back up again?
PS: We never closed. I transitioned to telemedicine within a week. I mean, very, very quickly. And worked to just get everybody set up and we just went, we just transitioned right away. I did not get any time off during the pandemic. [Laughs]
DLT: And what was it like to be, having all of your family at home?
PS: Well, as a homeschooling family originally, it was not that different. I mean, we were used to each other. I think it was more that we couldn't go out, not so much that we were at home. There was just no place to go, and we are usually a family on the move.
DLT: Did you or anyone else in your family take up new hobbies or other activities while trapped at home?
PS: I can't really answer that. [Laughs] In terms of myself, no, I was much busier in my home environment, getting used to the whole telemedicine change and having to do charting in a different way. I was much, much busier than I was prior to the pandemic. So picking up a new hobby was not really feasible.
DLT: And did you personally contract Covid-19?
PS: Not at that time. I was vaccinated and really did a lot to avoid it. I've probably been Covid-positive about six times since the discontinuation of mask mandates.
DLT: And did you know a lot of people, among friends and family, who contracted Covid?
PS: Had a lot of patients contract Covid. My family for the most part was very conscientious about contagion, followed all of the recommendations, some of my family members extremely closely. And we were, they were fortunately spared.
DLT: And how did you feel about the shelter-in-place orders at the time? And have your opinions changed since then?
PS: At the time I was, I think I was just anxious about the unknown. I didn't know how Covid-19 would behave in otherwise healthy individuals. Of course, you know, hearing about the large number of deaths every single night on the news was very frightening. So while I was appreciative of efforts made by the government to protect us, it got old fast. It was challenging from just a personal standpoint. Now? You asked me two parts. How do I feel about it now?
DLT: Yeah.
PS: You know, now it's kind of a distant memory. [Laughs] I'm not, I would— I'm a little worried, because of all the negative backlash to the stay-at-home orders, that the government might be slower to react in the event if we had a repeat possibility of a pandemic. And that's a little concerning. I don't think that politics should really play a role in whether or not we wear masks, or we get vaccinated, or we take appropriate precautions to prevent people from dying. So I'm a little saddened, I think, by some of the responses that have happened. I, you know, I do understand about businesses, and the strain that it put on businesses, especially small businesses. However, I think health comes first. Health and safety.
DLT: And in a similar vein, how did you feel about the mask and vaccination mandates at the time and have those opinions changed?
PS: I was first in line as soon as I could possibly get a vaccine, and I will get my vaccine in the fall. I think that vaccines are a godsend. So I was very thrilled at the vaccine. The vaccine allowed us to go out safely and continue to be relatively safe.
DLT: And with the perspective of four years since shutdowns, what do you feel the lasting impacts of Covid-19 have been on your field, on your personal life, on Metro Detroit, or the world?
PS: Okay, well, we'll start with the first one. On my field, it's dramatically changed how people practice medicine, especially in areas like mental health, where some providers have gone completely telemed. It is now being paid for and reimbursed by insurance companies. And that's a huge, huge transition that would probably have taken maybe a decade or two decades before that would have ever, that transformation would have occurred. So that's the biggest change. What were the other three things you said? Personally?
DLT: Yeah, personally, on Metro Detroit, and on the world.
PS: I think from a social perspective, people are much more aware of other people near them who might sneeze or sniffle or have any kind of a cold or allergy. And there's a definite sense of guardedness among people. People stand a little further away from each other than they used to. So, I think there's been a change in the social dynamic that is certainly evident when I'm around people in Metro Detroit. And other places, I don’t think it’s just Metro Detroit. I think that people are, people do basic things a little bit more, like wash their hands. People may not realize that most individuals did not really wash their hands regularly prior to the pandemic. And they were much less concerned about, you know, touching things and then touching their face. People, I think, are much more aware of handwashing, which is a good thing overall. I think it helps decrease the spread of the common cold and flu viruses and things like that. So that's a big transformation. Many, many people lost family members and loved ones during the pandemic and have had a lot of emotional issues to deal with because of those losses. And we're still working through those issues. They say that kids at school lost a lot of active learning and fell behind. As I said, I come from a homeschooling family. And I think that was the one positive thing that came from the pandemic: the kids that I had that were still in school—in college, primarily—found it much better to school from home via Zoom than actually to have to go on campus. And they excelled. I think they actually gained momentum during the pandemic.
DLT: And what lessons do you hope were learned through the crisis?
PS: Lessons. [Laughs] On a national level, I think that we learned how ill-prepared we were, in terms of, like, having supplies and PPE, things like that. As well as even just communication, and understanding what people will tolerate and not tolerate. So we've learned some of those things. Whether we will take those lessons and use them appropriately, I don't know. I think that a lot of people had to really learn to focus on their personal relationships a lot more. And I don't know if, on an individual level, that they've learned from those experiences. We had tremendous jumps in scientific knowledge in terms of how to manage all the different aspects of Covid, and we're still learning about, you know, the lessons of residual illness and how to deal with that. So that's more of a professional issue. Just in general as a society, I think that we're just— I think that people in general are living more, now, than they might have in the past. What I mean by that, they don't, they're not putting things off. They're taking advantage of the present, they're living now. They're not, there's less of an emphasis on, well, you know, let me let me prepare for the future. Let's live now. I think that's— And I'm not sure that's good or bad. I think in some ways that's really good, but I think there's less of an emphasis on preparing for future events, too.
DLT: And were there any other aspects of your experience with Covid-19 that you wanted to discuss that weren't brought up by any of my questions?
PS: I think that Covid-19— This may have been brought up by your question, but I didn't answer it. I think that Covid-19 really helped a lot of us appreciate what we have. And you think about going into a grocery store with full shelves, even something as basic as toilet paper, you know, having that accessible. I notice that we've never really returned to the same level of supply chain that we've had before the pandemic. Grocery shelves still are not as full of variety or as full, at least in the stores that I shop in, as they were before the pandemic. So it really kind of, I think, during the pandemic, made us appreciate what it was like to live without certain things, without certain items, and understand what scarcity is on a small level. I mean, obviously people in other parts of the world deal with it all the time, but here in the United States, at least in my lifetime, I never had to ever deal with scarcity. I might not be able to afford something all the time, in my lifetime, but it was there. That was— I think that made people in general appreciate the bountifulness that we do have in this society. It also brought out some of the worst [Laughs] behaviors, too, in people; watching people fight over rolls of toilet paper in the grocery store is an interesting phenomenon. And I hope to never see that one again.
DLT: Any final thoughts before I finish up the interview?
PS: No I don't, not really.
DLT: All right, then that was all the questions I had for you today. Thank you so much for your time.
PS: Thank you.
Paola Seidel: Paola Seidel. P a o l a S e i d e l
DLT: Thank you. And where do you live?
PS: I live in Troy, Michigan.
DLT: How long have you lived there?
PS: About 25 years.
DLT: And have you lived elsewhere in Metro Detroit?
PS: I've lived in Clawson, Michigan.
DLT: When did you live there?
PS: I lived there for about a decade before moving to Troy.
DLT: And when did you first hear about Covid-19?
PS: Let's see. I was in Buffalo, taking care of some personal business, and my husband informed me that there was a significant risk of the border being closed and that I should get home quickly. I might have heard of it before then, but that's when I really began to pay attention to it.
DLT: And were you initially worried?
PS: No, I wasn't.
DLT: And when did that change? If it did.
PS: I think it was March 13th, I believe, when the border actually closed and things shut down. And I mean, I had heard about it in the news. I am a physician. I was aware of it, but I was really impacted when the nation began to shut down as well as the state.
DLT: And what did these initial impacts look like?
PS: Well, for me, it began a transition to a telemedicine platform. Certainly a lifestyle change, having all family members now living at home in one place and working in one place. Of course, all of the sanitization techniques that we had to use: the masking, the wiping down all surfaces, social distancing, all of the recommendations that were put out by the CDC.
DLT: And what was it like to switch to telemedicine?
PS: [Laughs] It was quite the challenge. I'm not— I’ve become a lot more technologically adept than I was prior to the pandemic. I think it's very hard to do an adequate telemedicine evaluation of a new patient, for example, when you really can't see very much of what's happening, and you certainly can't do a physical examination. And also the technological difficulties of people not being able to utilize a Zoom platform, for example. It's completely new to a patient, and my patients tend to have cognitive impairments. So it was particularly challenging.
DLT: And did working over telemedicine get easier as shutdowns continued?
PS: Oh, definitely. And it's now become an integrated part of my practice.
DLT: And when did your practice start opening back up again?
PS: We never closed. I transitioned to telemedicine within a week. I mean, very, very quickly. And worked to just get everybody set up and we just went, we just transitioned right away. I did not get any time off during the pandemic. [Laughs]
DLT: And what was it like to be, having all of your family at home?
PS: Well, as a homeschooling family originally, it was not that different. I mean, we were used to each other. I think it was more that we couldn't go out, not so much that we were at home. There was just no place to go, and we are usually a family on the move.
DLT: Did you or anyone else in your family take up new hobbies or other activities while trapped at home?
PS: I can't really answer that. [Laughs] In terms of myself, no, I was much busier in my home environment, getting used to the whole telemedicine change and having to do charting in a different way. I was much, much busier than I was prior to the pandemic. So picking up a new hobby was not really feasible.
DLT: And did you personally contract Covid-19?
PS: Not at that time. I was vaccinated and really did a lot to avoid it. I've probably been Covid-positive about six times since the discontinuation of mask mandates.
DLT: And did you know a lot of people, among friends and family, who contracted Covid?
PS: Had a lot of patients contract Covid. My family for the most part was very conscientious about contagion, followed all of the recommendations, some of my family members extremely closely. And we were, they were fortunately spared.
DLT: And how did you feel about the shelter-in-place orders at the time? And have your opinions changed since then?
PS: At the time I was, I think I was just anxious about the unknown. I didn't know how Covid-19 would behave in otherwise healthy individuals. Of course, you know, hearing about the large number of deaths every single night on the news was very frightening. So while I was appreciative of efforts made by the government to protect us, it got old fast. It was challenging from just a personal standpoint. Now? You asked me two parts. How do I feel about it now?
DLT: Yeah.
PS: You know, now it's kind of a distant memory. [Laughs] I'm not, I would— I'm a little worried, because of all the negative backlash to the stay-at-home orders, that the government might be slower to react in the event if we had a repeat possibility of a pandemic. And that's a little concerning. I don't think that politics should really play a role in whether or not we wear masks, or we get vaccinated, or we take appropriate precautions to prevent people from dying. So I'm a little saddened, I think, by some of the responses that have happened. I, you know, I do understand about businesses, and the strain that it put on businesses, especially small businesses. However, I think health comes first. Health and safety.
DLT: And in a similar vein, how did you feel about the mask and vaccination mandates at the time and have those opinions changed?
PS: I was first in line as soon as I could possibly get a vaccine, and I will get my vaccine in the fall. I think that vaccines are a godsend. So I was very thrilled at the vaccine. The vaccine allowed us to go out safely and continue to be relatively safe.
DLT: And with the perspective of four years since shutdowns, what do you feel the lasting impacts of Covid-19 have been on your field, on your personal life, on Metro Detroit, or the world?
PS: Okay, well, we'll start with the first one. On my field, it's dramatically changed how people practice medicine, especially in areas like mental health, where some providers have gone completely telemed. It is now being paid for and reimbursed by insurance companies. And that's a huge, huge transition that would probably have taken maybe a decade or two decades before that would have ever, that transformation would have occurred. So that's the biggest change. What were the other three things you said? Personally?
DLT: Yeah, personally, on Metro Detroit, and on the world.
PS: I think from a social perspective, people are much more aware of other people near them who might sneeze or sniffle or have any kind of a cold or allergy. And there's a definite sense of guardedness among people. People stand a little further away from each other than they used to. So, I think there's been a change in the social dynamic that is certainly evident when I'm around people in Metro Detroit. And other places, I don’t think it’s just Metro Detroit. I think that people are, people do basic things a little bit more, like wash their hands. People may not realize that most individuals did not really wash their hands regularly prior to the pandemic. And they were much less concerned about, you know, touching things and then touching their face. People, I think, are much more aware of handwashing, which is a good thing overall. I think it helps decrease the spread of the common cold and flu viruses and things like that. So that's a big transformation. Many, many people lost family members and loved ones during the pandemic and have had a lot of emotional issues to deal with because of those losses. And we're still working through those issues. They say that kids at school lost a lot of active learning and fell behind. As I said, I come from a homeschooling family. And I think that was the one positive thing that came from the pandemic: the kids that I had that were still in school—in college, primarily—found it much better to school from home via Zoom than actually to have to go on campus. And they excelled. I think they actually gained momentum during the pandemic.
DLT: And what lessons do you hope were learned through the crisis?
PS: Lessons. [Laughs] On a national level, I think that we learned how ill-prepared we were, in terms of, like, having supplies and PPE, things like that. As well as even just communication, and understanding what people will tolerate and not tolerate. So we've learned some of those things. Whether we will take those lessons and use them appropriately, I don't know. I think that a lot of people had to really learn to focus on their personal relationships a lot more. And I don't know if, on an individual level, that they've learned from those experiences. We had tremendous jumps in scientific knowledge in terms of how to manage all the different aspects of Covid, and we're still learning about, you know, the lessons of residual illness and how to deal with that. So that's more of a professional issue. Just in general as a society, I think that we're just— I think that people in general are living more, now, than they might have in the past. What I mean by that, they don't, they're not putting things off. They're taking advantage of the present, they're living now. They're not, there's less of an emphasis on, well, you know, let me let me prepare for the future. Let's live now. I think that's— And I'm not sure that's good or bad. I think in some ways that's really good, but I think there's less of an emphasis on preparing for future events, too.
DLT: And were there any other aspects of your experience with Covid-19 that you wanted to discuss that weren't brought up by any of my questions?
PS: I think that Covid-19— This may have been brought up by your question, but I didn't answer it. I think that Covid-19 really helped a lot of us appreciate what we have. And you think about going into a grocery store with full shelves, even something as basic as toilet paper, you know, having that accessible. I notice that we've never really returned to the same level of supply chain that we've had before the pandemic. Grocery shelves still are not as full of variety or as full, at least in the stores that I shop in, as they were before the pandemic. So it really kind of, I think, during the pandemic, made us appreciate what it was like to live without certain things, without certain items, and understand what scarcity is on a small level. I mean, obviously people in other parts of the world deal with it all the time, but here in the United States, at least in my lifetime, I never had to ever deal with scarcity. I might not be able to afford something all the time, in my lifetime, but it was there. That was— I think that made people in general appreciate the bountifulness that we do have in this society. It also brought out some of the worst [Laughs] behaviors, too, in people; watching people fight over rolls of toilet paper in the grocery store is an interesting phenomenon. And I hope to never see that one again.
DLT: Any final thoughts before I finish up the interview?
PS: No I don't, not really.
DLT: All right, then that was all the questions I had for you today. Thank you so much for your time.
PS: Thank you.
Collection
Citation
“Paola Seidel, August 28th, 2024,” Detroit Historical Society Oral History Archive, accessed February 8, 2025, https://oralhistory.detroithistorical.org/items/show/1063.