An emergency room doctor faces death every day, but Dr. Mert Erogul experienced a touching encounter with life this week — as he watched life slipping away from a 100-year-old woman.
Erogul is a physician at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. It’s been a terrible week for medical staffers at hospitals across New York City, as these overworked doctors and nurses care for those afflicted with COVID-19 in addition to their normal work load.
But the story of one patient stands out to Erogul this week.
Among the massive caseload he was dealing with was a 100-year-old Hasidic Jewish woman who had been stricken by COVID-19 and gotten pneumonia. Erogul wanted to get her stable enough to send home — so she could die at home with family — but she was doing so poorly that he couldn’t release her.
After the woman’s blood pressure dropped and Erogul decided to keep her in the hospital, the woman’s son kept calling for an hour to find out how she was doing.
“I finally told him, ‘Look, she’s a hundred years old with pneumonia in both lungs,'” Erogul wrote on a Facebook post. “‘She’s not good. She’s not going to do well.'”

How did memory get it wrong? Why did I edit truth about her?
The gifts we give children shape them and reveal what we expect of them
Moral principle: What you do with your money is your business
Past behavior is best indicator of how he’ll treat you in the future
Anatomy of a lie: Why destroy credibility by exaggerating facts?
Is ‘galvanic skin response’ a way to measure how much kids learn?
National LP official: ‘It’s gotta be Romney, there is no choice’
I want the culture to value smart women more than ‘hot’ women
Why keep playing a game that’s impossible for you to win?