Catching Up

March 22, 2020

I’m at work. It’s just after 4:00 a.m. I’m almost caffeinated enough for a change. I’ve been using melatonin to sleep during the day and it’s perfect. I use about 0.9 mg (nine drops of a liquid solution) over the course of the day and I sleep pretty well.

All the news is corona virus.  As it should be. The hospital is ending visitation for all patients in an effort to try to stem the rising tide. It’s…It looks hopeless right now, to be honest. The little offshoot hospital where I work is supposed to send patients to the main hospital to be tested for corona virus as needed. But the main hospital has so far not performed any of those tests on behalf of those patients. When you look at the state where I live, there are something like 50 confirmed cases.

Lol.

Turns out if you don’t test anyone, you don’t confirm any cases.

I actually think I’ve already had it (see below, March 12). If that was it, it was mild. If that was it and it was mild, then I was very, very lucky. People my age and younger are ending up on ventilators. They might survive it—unlike elderly patients or those with comorbidities—but the burden on the hospital system is going to be immense. I don’t know if any of this is making the news—I’m fortunate enough not to have a television set so my news comes from Twitter, believe it or not. People laugh when I say that, but guess who tweets? Doctors in Italy tweet. Nurses in hot spots in the U.S. tweet. People with symptoms who can’t get tested tweet. Reporters who can’t get straight answers tweet. People who Trump fired when he kneecapped the CDC tweet. Professors of epidemiology tweet. Statiticians who are watching worldwide trends tweet. There is information out there. I don’t know if it’s making the news, but it’s coming through loud and clear.

This is the worst possible timeline. We are living it.

I’m giving myself a panic attack right now. This is not good. I’m going to stop writing.

ANCIENT HISTORY:

March 6, 2020:

It’s 5:47 on Friday morning. I’m nearing the end of my shift. It has been an interesting evening. My supervisor is so angry at me that she has hardly spoken to me all night. I am 100% okay with that. It’s been nice, actually. I’m sure they’ll be trying to get rid of me soon. I’m also 100% okay with that. I’ll get the union involved if I have to and then transfer out of here. There are plenty of other places I can work.

I have been doing not much at all. No, actually I have been doing a lot of freaking out about the corona virus. Several patients have been sick in such a way that makes me think it’s already here. I’ve likely already been exposed, so we’ll see. I’ve been wiping everything down at home with anti-viral wipes. Everything that comes in the house, I mean. I’ve been leaving my shoes outside and changing out of my scrubs outside. I absolutely don’t want to expose anyone else if I’ve been exposed. It’s going to get so much worse before it gets better and it’s going to kill a lot of people.

March 12, 2020

It’s Thursday morning. I traded shifts, so I am working the Wednesday-Thursday overnight shift.

I’ve had a sore throat for several days. I’m okay as long as it doesn’t move down into my chest. I’ve also had a mild elevation in temperature (no higher than 98.3), not even enough to call it a fever, but it’s there. Could be allergies. Could be something more sinister. I’m sick of thinking about it.

On Monday, Dave and I went to the county clerk’s office and got a marriage license. We’re getting married because when Dave’s job goes away, so does our insurance. Getting a marriage license allows us to apply for insurance through my job, otherwise we would have to try to find another plan to buy or go on Cobra, which would cost around $1,000 or so a month. That’s not sustainable. So we’re getting insurance through my work. Since I am part time, we’ll have to pay 40% of the premium. It’s not going to be cheap, but it’s not going to be $1,000 month either. I’ll pick up an extra shift or so each month and that should cover us.

I’ll go home this morning and try to get some sleep so I can come back this evening. The upside of having traded my shift (at the request of a co-worker) is that I’ll get the weekend off. That was fortuitous. I’m looking forward to having the weekend off.

It rained yesterday, on and off throughout the day. It will be cloudy today (fine, I’ll be sleeping) and then is supposed to rain again in the evening, after 9:00 p.m. I’ll be at work then.