So much has changed since I last wrote to you.
Whether you think it’s overblown or are terrified witless or something in between, coronavirus has happened, is happening, is beginning to happen. I live too close to it in the Seattle area. Two of the three people in my family are at high risk and I’m slightly elevated because of my age.
I saw a meme the other day that said, “Keep calm and wash your hands.”
That’s good advice.
I have to remember that I have good experience with this kind of thing. It’s like the Universe trained me for it. My son has viral-induced asthma. What that means is that whenever he gets a cold, his lungs fill up with fluid, he gets a certain sound in his cough, and he needs medication to keep his airways open. Between the ages of four and ten, Nick got pneumonia at least six times. One time, they told us he had pneumonia again, but since it was only two months later than the last time, we thought that maybe it was the same pneumonia and he never really got better from it. That year was stressful, his first-grade year. His teacher kept arguing with me that he was missing too much school and we should bring him in anyway. I told her and the school nurse that if she could monitor his breathing, check his oxygen saturation on an hourly basis, and give him nebulized medication two to three times during class, I would consider it. The school nurse told me, and her, that he should stay home until he could breathe more easily. He missed nineteen days of school that year.
When Nick was nine, H1N1 hit the scene. Do you even remember that? I do. Mike and I implemented the handwashing/hand-sanitizing method of protection. At ten, Nick washed his hands before and after lunch and at every recess. Back then, it was cool enough for him to sing 'Happy Birthday’ to know when he could be finished. He carried hand sanitizer in his pocket at all times. We all did. As soon as any of us got home, we washed our hands. We told him not to touch anything he didn’t need to touch when he was just standing around. We taught him not to touch his face after he’d touched a surface that could be contaminated. Those are hard lessons to learn. Do you know how many times in an hour that you unconsciously touch your face?
That’s worth thinking about.
Nick was in the first group of people among the high risk and the elderly that received the H1N1 vaccine. They also gave him a second pneumonia shot then, the one that they usually gave to people who were frail. The nurse insisted that the whole family get the H1N1 vaccine then too. It was the only way to protect him, she said. I can’t tell you what a relief it was when two weeks passed after that shot. Nick was out of danger.
He still washes his hands when he gets home. We all do.
A year later, when Nick was eleven, he got bronchitis again and was home trying to keep it from turning into pneumonia, I got a text from Mike that he was being transported to the hospital. The tone of his text was completely even, so I knew that it was frightening him and he was trying to keep us both calm.
To tell you the truth, I’ve been feeling that same way for the past three days, trying to keep calm.
He’d had a mild heart attack.
In the days that ensued, I went back and forth between my sick boy at home and my sick husband in the hospital. Mike had had a mild heart attack in a vein that was too small to catheterize to open up. In the meantime, Nick was at home having hallucinations from low oxygen and prednisone. Hallucinations. Even Nick used that same even tone when he called me.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I know they aren’t real.”
Fuck!
That week, I also witnessed two accidents on I-90 and when I mean witnessed, I mean that two cars directly in front of me hit each other and I had to dodge hunks of flying metal going sixty miles an hour. For the first accident, I was the only person who stopped and I had two people who were going into shock, one of whom hit her head and wanted to stay seated in a smoking car. Did I hand out that furry blanket I usually used for my dog? You bet I did. I also had to walk out of the tunnel and call 911 again because I saw that the fire truck had ended up on the interstate going the wrong direction.
Do you see how I took a tangent down the road toward the accident and didn’t tell you more about how I felt trying to jockey between a husband with a heart attack and a son who couldn’t breathe and was having hallucinations? I’d also had some experience with heart attacks. Three of my grandparents died of heart disease by the time I was twenty-one. What I believed in my soul, based on my experience with a statistical group of three people, was that heart attacks almost always killed someone. Almost, because my grandpa Roy had three heart attacks and the first two only nearly killed him.
Ah, I took that tangent again.
I just can’t quite tell you how I felt during that week. It felt a little like the Universe was giving me Sophie’s choice. Which of these two people that you dearly love should live? You pick.
Well, I leaned into the wind and shouted, metaphorically that is, that I wanted them both. No, I didn’t do that in real life. That would have looked crazy, but I did cry in my car a lot that week. I needed to get it out of my system so I could appear calm and efficient when I was around Mike and Nick.
So now, though I’m working hard not to panic, I am not actually feeling laid back about this pandemic. I’m not. I have two high risk people in my home and I love them both very much. I’ve learned a lot to combat contagion over the past fifteen years. I don’t wish this same kind of experience on you.
But I’ll tell you this: I’m going to be washing my hands and whispering ‘Happy Birthday’ a great deal in the coming weeks and I’d appreciate if you would do the same.
Thank you for listening, jules