Being responsible for someone else: a shared duty for parents and heart failure specialists during the COVID-19 pandemic

A pandemic by a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been declared by the World Health Organization. Lombardy, the region of our tertiary referral centre for heart diseases in Northern Italy, has been particularly hit by the pandemic. According to the government's prescriptions, all elective activities and procedures in the last months were suspended in order to concentrate our efforts on COVID-19 patients' care. Entire departments have been turned into ‘COVID-19 units’, where healthcare professionals are daily involved in supporting critically ill patients. On a personal level, this was a period of special feelings and peculiar unexpected events. People close to healthcare workers have been affected, and our lives have been turned upside down. Furthermore, right in this period, few colleagues (and friends) are facing entirely new events in their lives, such as fatherhood with its load of joy and concern. Through the case of a young woman recently admitted to our department with a severe heart failure due to a peripartum cardiomyopathy, described in narrative form, this manuscript would help all those involved in the front line in the fight against the pandemic in these difficult times.