‘I Had Never Faced the Reality of Death’: A Surgeon Becomes a Patient

Infected early in the pandemic, Dr. Tomoaki Kato, a renowned transplant surgeon, was soon on life support, and one of the sickest patients in his own hospital.

Early in the pandemic, as hospitals in New York began postponing operations to make way for the flood of Covid-19 cases, Dr. Tomoaki Kato continued to perform surgery. Patients still needed liver transplants, and some were too sick to wait. At 56, Dr. Kato was healthy and exceptionally fit. He had run the New York City Marathon seven times, and he specialized in operations that were also marathons, lasting 12 or 16 or 20 hours. He was renowned for surgical innovations, deft hands and sheer stamina. At NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, where he was the surgical director of adult and pediatric liver and intestinal transplantation, his boss has called him “our Michael Jordan.” Dr. Kato became ill with Covid-19 in March 2020.