Jeremy moved his office from the guest room into Edda’s bedroom in anticipation of Vince’s return home from California. Jeremy *loves* his work at home setup. He’s always trying to figure out how to get more screen area. He really needs a nice office chair.
We have not done any Christmas decoration except for the Zoom background, which I showed you earlier in the guest room, but now has expanded and exploded in Edda’s room. Can you find the menorah? How about the german nutcracker?
I attended the zoom meeting today discussing the administration of the vaccine at my hospital. They are getting the first shipment of the Pfizer vaccine either today or tomorrow (975 doses) and then there are three waves within the hospital. The whole hospital is getting first priority generally speaking, but the first wave are folks whose job requires an n95 mask, the second wave are people who are required to wear a regular surgical mask and the third wave are people who can do their jobs remotely. Then within the first wave, there is just a simple lottery system. We’ll get emails on Friday with our lottery number, there are about 7,000 employees in the system. When it’s your turn, you get a few days to decide to take it or decline it. And if you decline it, you get to go to the back of the line. From the survey they sent out, about 2/3 said that they were definitely or very likely to get the vaccine. 1/3 said they would be unlikely or for sure never getting the vaccine. The first clinics will begin next Monday. I haven’t taken care of a known COVID patient since May, but yesterday, we had one day nurse and two night nurses float to COVID units. I think my turn to float is soon. Of course, everyone hates floating in general, they don’t tell you until you get to work. I mentioned that it would be a shame to get floated to a COVID unit and get sick like the week before I could get the vaccine and a friend mentioned, you’d be like John Laurens in Hamilton who died in a battle after the war was over.
I always have trouble being productive the day after a shift, but today I’m extra anxious for a few reasons. Vince is on the move starting today from CA back to Maryland. (He did such a good job this term, making the best out of a lousy situation. He kept friendships going online and he enjoyed California and did well in all his classes. All a big deal. ) There is suppose to be a big snowstorm in the DC area – but we are right on the rain/snow line. We booked a flight out of Oakland so it’ll be a direct one, but it means taking a train and staying at a hotel overnight. Of course, the travel makes me nervous. I mean, travel in general makes me nervous, but add on top of it both the snowstorm and covid and I’m a bundle of nerves. I’m trying to not bug Vince too much about masking, though I mentioned to him not to eat/drink or remove his mask on the plane and he was like – oh yeah, that’s right.
And lastly, I update on our dear Edda. She’s had a rough 2-3 days. On both Sun and Monday, she suffered through three or four pretty strong seizures. And this morning (when we were taking in the car for service), she had another strong seizure. We are systematically (desperately) trying to get her appointments at Children’s, but her regular providers are booked for weeks/months. But we are figuring it out. The seizures have been ramping up again slowly over weeks, she’s been on the 1000 mg Keppra BID since early Sept, but I think we need to look at something else. We have an appt on Friday with another neuro on the “team” – someone new (recommended by our consulting doctor). Poor girl, sometimes she seizes and then bites her tongue enough to bleed. It’s hard to watch. But we’ll manage. She still has many many happy and contented moments. Overall, I think she’s ok and enjoying her life. She is still eating well and enjoying the extra Christmas sweets we are making in the house.
I guess I’ll update the car? We had a “check airbag” light flash on/off probably 8-10 times in the past month, but nothing now for a few weeks. Our regular repair guy said – I don’t touch airbags, you gotta go to the dealer. We went to the dealer and they ran the computer on the system and it says – intermittent faulty driver’s side airbag. Do you know how much a new airbag costs? $1500. Oh! Also, the windshield wiper on the drivers side wasn’t wiping that well, so I ordered a new one and installed it and I drove it to work yesterday in the rain and it still wasn’t working well – smearing the water all over. Was it worse than it was before? I was grouchy about it. I was almost about to order a windshield surface treatment liquid from amazon after I parked at the hospital, but then my entire Amazon ordering is in Spanish (because I converted my phone over to spanish) and I was too tired to deal with a Spanish shopping cart transaction (you think you don’t really read the repetitive things on websites, but you really do read all the things on a web site even if you have ordered thousands of dollars, somehow ordering wiper fluid at 6:10 am in a parking lot in a foreign language wondering if you are going to spend the day in a covid unit just seemed a mountain too high to climb) And then, later that night, I complained about it to Jeremy and said what I wanted for Christmas was a well wiped windshield and we went to sleep. And then he drove it today to take it to the airbag analysis appointment and then laughed his head off at me because I had failed to take off the bright yellow protective cover packaging from the blade. Jeremy was like – it was bright yellow?! how could you not notice? I said – I thought it was yellow to be “cool”. Maybe all windshield wipers are yellow now I blurted back. lol. Sometimes I really am not very with it.