A top Manhattan E.R Doctor who continued to treat patients after she recovered from COVID19 has died by suicide

Dr. Lorna Breen; a top ER doctor that treated many coronavirus patients died by suicide on Sunday at the age of 49 in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she was staying with family, her father said in an interview.

“She tried to do her job, and it killed her,” said the father of Dr. Breen, who worked at a Manhattan hospital

Dr. Lorna Breen had contracted COVID-19 and took a week and a half off to recover. She felt that she had to get back in there to help her colleagues but when she went back to work, she couldn’t last through a 12-hour shift, her father said.

The hospital sent her home again and she went to Virginia, where most of her family is based.

Dr. Breen’s father, said she had described devastating scenes of the toll the coronavirus took on patients.

Dr. Breen did not have a history of mental illness, her father said. But he said that when he last spoke with her, she seemed detached and he could tell something was wrong.

“Words cannot convey the sense of loss we feel today. Dr. Breen is a hero who brought the highest ideals of medicine to the challenging front lines of the emergency department,” they said. “Our focus today is to provide support to her family, friends, and colleagues as they cope with this news during what is already an extraordinarily difficult time.” – The New York City hospital where Breen worked said in a statement.

A colleague said that Dr. Breen was always looking out for others, making sure doctors had protective equipment and everything they needed. Even when she was home recovering from coronavirus, she texted her colleagues to check in and see how they were doing.

Outside of her work, Dr. Breen was incredibly close to her family and friends. She was described as a devout Christian who volunteered weekly at an assisted living home for the elderly. She filled her time with hobbies and sports. She was an avid member of a New York ski club and travelled regularly out west to ski and snowboard. Once a year, she threw a large party on the roof deck of her Manhattan home.

One colleague said he had spent many hours talking to Dr. Breen not only about medicine but about their lives and the hobbies she enjoyed. She was a salsa dancer. She was a lively presence, outgoing and extroverted, at work events, another colleague said.

“She was truly in the trenches of the front line. Make sure she’s praised as a hero, because she was. She’s a casualty just as much as anyone else who has died.” her father said.