Physician couples draft wills, face tough questions amid COVID-19

The biggest challenge is the uncertainty, says Angela Weyand, MD, an Ann Arbor, Mich.–based pediatric hematologist/oncologist who shares two young daughters with husband Ted Claflin, MD, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician. Dr. Weyand said she and her husband are primarily working remotely now, but she knows that one or both could be deployed to the hospital to help care for patients, if the need arises. Nearby Detroit has been labeled a coronavirus “hot spot” by the U.S. Surgeon General.

^{Courtesy Dr. Angela Weyand}

Dr. Angela Weyand said she and her husband, Dr. Ted Claflin, worry about exposing people they love to the virus.

“Right now, I think our biggest fear is spreading coronavirus to those we love, especially those in higher risk groups,” she said. “At the same time, we are also concerned about our own health and our future ability to be there for our children, a fear that, thankfully, neither one of us has ever had to face before. We are trying to take things one day at a time, acknowledging all that we have to be grateful for, and also learning to accept that many things right now are outside of our control.”

Dr. Weyand, 38, and her husband, 40, finalized their wills in March.

“We have been working on them for quite some time, but before now, there has never been any urgency,” Dr. Weyand said. “Hearing about the high rate of infection in health care workers and the increasing number of deaths in young healthy people made us realize that this should be a priority.”

Dallas internist Bethany Agusala, MD, 36, and her husband, Kartik Agusala, MD, 41, a cardiologist, recently spent time engaged in the same activity. The couple, who work for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, have two children, aged 2 and 4.

^{Courtesy Dr. Bethany Agusala}

"The chances are hopefully small that something bad would happen to either one of us, but it just seemed like a good time to get [a will] in place,” said Dr. Bethany Agusala, who is married to Dr. Kartik Agusala.

“The chances are hopefully small that something bad would happen to either one of us, but it just seemed like a good time to get [a will] in place,” Dr. Bethany Agusala said in an interview. “It’s never an easy thing to think about. I think this crisis has really changed a lot of people’s priorities, and the things that didn’t seem important before are now really important and vice versa.”