Author: Doris

Texting with my beloved charge nurse, Astra. I love my charge nurse. I am also quite fond of my manager, Anthony. I need to stop reading the news now. Or at least limit it to once a day or something….

We ventured downtown yesterday because we had the housekeepers come and we didn’t want to be in the house with them and Jeremy wanted to do pickup for coworkers who didn’t have cars and who wanted their monitors or plants or whatever. His office has been closed for a week now, but they are closing it closing it starting today – like you are not allowed to go in because they are terminating cleaning and they want to know that no one is there. Vince didn’t want to come with us, so he took the other car and promised to sit in a parking lot somewhere and watch Netflix. But he veered off plan and went to the grocery store and bought himself boxed sushi and an energy drink. I was mad at him for going and for “wasting” a shopping trip. He said he stayed far away from everyone and washed his hands. I was still mad.

Some of Vince’s friends are still gathering to play cards or there is a camping trip that’s being planned. He kinda tells me this with a longing look in his eyes. I sigh. He says, don’t worry, I know I can’t go.

All of our bikes in Jeremy’s pain cave. He bought me a blue training tire for my crappy garage sale bike I got for free after no one wanted it from our neighbors. Somehow this amuses him.

Here we are – what now? About 5 days into self-quarantine. We are fine. Making the best of it. I remember last week when things seemed more normal and we were still thinking of sending Vince to Minnesota and Toronto – I was talking to Vickey and saying that I was scared that they would close down the Canadian border and Vince would be stuck on the other side and she had laughed. She has a close relative who does a lot of business between the US and Canada and she said that he had said crossing the border is a non-issue and I agreed! I know sometimes I can be overdramatic about these things and I said – I know! The Canadian border would be the last to close – they would never close that border and thought myself silly for thinking such an outrageous thing. And it closed – when? Yesterday? Vince would have been stuck in Canada.

Jeremy seems to find it easier to concentrate on work than I. I’m often just sitting around in disbelief. Which, I think, is OK given the circumstances. We’ve all moved our bikes to Jeremy’s bike closet and have been taking turns riding around in our closet. I realize now that he has an incredible set up – three screens, an industrial fan on voice control, clif bars within arms reach – it’s like an indoor biking paradise. Jeremy usually watches bike races and/or commentary while he is riding, but they are rapidly running out of content to report on.

I, on the other hand, watch only pop videos. And this one made me cry! Look! People close to each other and celebrating! I think – we are never going to be able to do that again. And then I cry. I’m a very well socialized introvert. My preference is always to stay at home and I’d almost always rather be by myself. Coffee date? I’d rather be home. Movie girls night? I’d rather be home. Group runs? No – I’ll go alone. So I think I can totally handle staying in my house with only three other people, but it’s not quite true. I know I need little interactions with people to feel like a person. I don’t like veering off the sidewalk to stay six feet away from other people, I don’t like being scared of other people. It messes with your (my) head. And it’s only day 5!

We are going through movies like everyone else. Trying to think of light hearted sweet movies. We saw “Big”. I think the next is Legally Blonde.

Hi folks, we are all here all the time now. We are fine. The house is big, we generally like each other. It’s hard to concentrate on doing any work – both Jeremy and I both are working at home (we are very lucky). Edda and Vince are doing their own thing. Edda is sleeping in and staying up late, I should go wake her up now. It’s 7:30! So late. Vince asked to be woken up every day at 10 am. I have no idea what he is doing. He’s playing a lot of video games. I don’t track his grades, but they do mail home mid-term grades and I happened to open it this week and was a little shocked at how low they were (not failing!). Of course, he’s a senior and the reason I stopped checking his grades a long, long time ago is because he likes to perform low-ish during the term and then during the last bit of the term, pull his act together and see if he can ace the last big project and the final. Which he has done with some regularity and also has not done with some regularity. Which he is totally OK with, I think he would rather gamble the grade than to a whole ton of extra work. He is a strange, strange boy. I just could not mentally handle that – either as a student or as his mother. Anyways, I suspect the mid-term grades will be frozen and that’ll be it. It’s ok.

Max has no idea what is happening. She does not know what time it is anymore (just like the rest of us). Usually she nudges us for breakfast or dinner based on who comes home when, but since we never come and go, she just sleeps and sleeps.

We Facetimed family dinner on Sunday. There was a lot of background noise. I wonder if we can fix that.

My toe should heal nicely. I went to the ortho yesterday. I shouldn’t have gone and waited in the waiting room because I knew it would heal nicely and it feels a lot better now than over the weekend. So many people coughing (after that person left, the staff immediately Lysoled the whole waiting room), sitting too close to each other (c’mon people it’s an enormous waiting room, are you really going to sit like two seats away from me?). I should be back at the hospital working in a couple of weeks. Every time I read something about healthcare workers getting sick, I feel nauseous and want to throw up. I have a few weeks to screw up my courage.

On Thursday, I was weightlifting at the gym and I accidentally dropped a 30 pound bar on my left big toe. I did not scream, but it did hurt like a mf and I was only 15 min into the workout and I was like – I can still keep going and after about 10 min of limping around the gym, I was like – I can’t keep going, I gotta go home. The first thought that entered my mind right after the bar hit my toe was Shit, I can’t go to work at the hospital. But I thought that after I iced it and rested it, it would be OK. And it was OK all afternoon. Jeremy wasn’t well in the afternoon and asked if I could cook dinner, so I shuffled around the kitchen and made raviolis for everyone. Then I put on some slippers and took Maxi out for a walk and I realized that my toe hurt a lot. Like enough so I couldn’t make it long enough for Maxi to get her poop in (or out). I came back into the house, elevated my foot and groaned. I do kind of wish my patients would suck it up a little more regarding pain and not go right away to taking narcotics, but on Thursday night, I told Jeremy that I could really use a Percocet right then. And then I didn’t want to go to urgent care or the ED or anything because it was too late at night but I really thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep well without any pain meds (I had already taken some ibuprofen) and I didn’t want to mix with all those people who certainly had COVID. But Jeremy called the ED (I had asked if I could go to my own ED at my work even though it isn’t the closest one) and they said to come on in. And so I did. I look so old in this photo – glasses slipping down my nose, I have stretchy pants on and sitting next to a wheelchair.

The PA took one look at my toe and said it’s a broken toe and then said they’ll x-ray it to confirm and prescribed me tramadol. Jeremy said – you never talk about tramadol as a pain med and I said that I considered it the weakest opioid and it’s prescribed the least.

The break is small – I can tell a little triangle piece has broken off and is there another fracture? Can’t quite tell. Anyways, the tramadol worked, I slept like a baby and I have an ortho appointment on Monday. We did go to the CVS at 11:30 pm to pick up extra tramadol in case I woke up at 3 am in throbbing pain. CVS at 11:30 pm in the midst of a pandemic is a happening place. The pharmacist was busy stocking people up on medication. People were arguing over the 1 clorox wipe / 1 purell / 1 toilet paper per family policy. We tried to get out of there quickly.

Vince stayed home all week because he wasn’t well. So I think his senior year is done. On Friday morning, he asked if he could use our credit card to renew his Minecraft account – a video game he played in middle school. He’s back to playing video games with his friends. He came downstairs for dinner last night and said – I feel like I’m 13 again! No homework, nothing to worry about. I’m playing Minecraft and yelling a lot. I know lots of families are homeschooling or doing something. We plan on doing nothing. It’ll be like the worst case of senioritis ever. Theoretically, Vince has AP tests in May and I guess you are suppose to self-study now for those exams? I think that’s not going to happen. Vince thinks the tests themselves are going to be cancelled. Vincie got into Davis on Thursday night. We are all very, very excited. Except that it’s closed.

I can’t believe it’s Thursday and everyone is home. Jeremy is home. Vince is home (sick). Maybe he has the coronavirus? We dunno! Because we can’t test him in this very advanced country of ours. Edda, the tough one, made it to school today.

Of course, everyone has things cancelled. Jeremy cancelled his business trip to MN (I think he had the toughest time admitting that his work was non-essential as his work banned all non-essential travel). Vince cancelled his birthday party, his trips to MN and Toronto. Edda cancelled her pancake breakfast birthday party. I cancelled a routine blood work appointment because I don’t want to go to a doctor’s office. You know what’s not cancelled? Extra shifts at the hospital. They asked me to work again today (which would have been my third day in four – I usually only work at the hospital once a week). I had other work meetings at my other job I didn’t want to reschedule, so I turned it down. My hospital is known for being cheap, not paying more $ for extra shifts, but apparently they offered 3x salary to come in today. I’m not sure if that is true.

My shift yesterday was completely normal. If I didn’t know the world was falling apart around me, I would have said – hey! this is a damn good shift. I performed many nursing skills with flair and pizzaz. Foleys in on the first try, wound vacs placed without leaks, blood transfusions, tippy patients almost, but not falling on their way to the bathroom. Deploying my rapidly expanding Spanish (still terrible) – pastilla? dolor?

Jeremy and I are trying to figure out my hospital work with the rest of the family. I finally told my boss (who I’ve had for over a decade) at my desk job about my nursing job. I have about a week and a half off before my next shift. My goal is to finish the taxes and to move my home office into the guest bedroom and do a low-key home quarantine in the house. Jeremy’s like – I’ll take care of Edda, Vince will take his room, you have the guest room and don’t use the common rooms, the kitchen, the bathrooms, etc. Then pick up shifts as they need you at the hospital. We’ve stopped seeing my parents, I facetimed my dad this morning as he started radiation therapy for his prostate cancer yesterday.

I’m not sure what will happen at the hospital. I’m neither an ICU nurse nor an ED nurse. I’m afraid that the ICU will be overwhelmed and run out of ventilators and that the overflow will come to my unit because at least every room has a source of oxygen on the wall. Right now, 100% of my patients breath well. If you aren’t breathing well, you go to the ICU. I’m afraid soon 100% of my patients will not be breathing well and there won’t be much I can do about it.

All Maryland schools are closed now from Monday onwards. I think Vince’s senior year is done. No graduation, no nothing. I see in Vince that he wants to go to school tomorrow and he would go slightly sick if it was a normal day. He’s worried about his schoolwork. I’m sad he has one day to be with his senior class. We’ll have to see how he feels tomorrow.

I dropped a 30 pound weight on my toe today. It wasn’t a dumbell, it was a padded bar about 3-4 feet long. I’m hoping I didn’t break it. I might have. I’m limping around. It’s black and blue and swollen. Gah. I might have taken myself out.

We celebrated Vince’s 18th birthday this weekend (his birthday was yesterday – Monday). First a dinner out on Saturday night with his friends and us and my parents at Founding Farmers. I sat closest to the boys so I asked about their jobs, their driving skills and school. My father asked them where their girlfriends were.

Sunday, we had birthday dinner with the extended Martin family. Vince made his own dinner, coq au vin. I watched him pour a whole bottle of wine into the dish and then he said – that’s a lot of wine and then I said – well it’s in the name! It was delicious! Vince knows how to cook.

On his actual birthday, I was working at the hospital and it was a Very Bad news day and Vince is actually not feeling very well – not COVID – no fever, but swollen lymph nodes, achy joints and feeling out of sorts. So when I came home, I wanted to celebrate by helping him register to vote, but he turned me down politely saying he wasn’t in the mood and then today, he stayed home from school. It was a pretty terrible day to turn into an adult.

Jeremy is working from home now everyday which is a plus for him and a minus for me. I like Jeremy a lot, but I also like my alone time in the house a lot. I think if this lasts a long time, we’ll have to negotiate a new home working routine. Right now we both barge into each other’s work space to chit chat. It’s ruining the rhythm of the day. Jeremy was going to cancel his trip to MN next week, but it would have meant hours and hours of lost work trying to set up face-to-face meetings with various people. So it’s still on. Vince was suppose to go with him to UMinn and then onto Toronto, but we’ll have to see how much better Vince will feel by then. Vince is more concerned about his 18th birthday party which is suppose to be held on Friday night, we are seriously thinking of cancelling it. Vince said – I have so many fun things planned! And I said if schools are closed or you are not completely well, we are going to have to cancel.

I was at the hospital on Monday, it was a totally normal shift other than the insane COVID discussions going around. I have a shift tomorrow which I think will be normal and then I’m off for about 10 days and I think that shift when I return will be different. How different and in what way, I’m not sure. We were also told that if the schools close and you have little kids, saying that you don’t have childcare is not an excused absence. You are expected to show up to work.

Edda had another seizure yesterday, so our hopes that those two seizures within six hours of each other on Feb 12 were a fluke do not seem to be true. We still have that neuro appt at Children’s in a few weeks we are going to. We might also follow up at CHOP at their Rett Clinic now that we know that we know the people running it. We are also going to start tracking Edda’s periods to see if the seizures track with monthly hormone shifts. I gotta figure out a period tracking app. I haven’t had a period in something like 14 years via my IUD, so I’m out of practice. Edda’s school seems very chill about the seizures, I was worried that they would all freak out and want to put stringent protocols in place, but I got a calm call from her teacher saying that Edda’s seizure happened at lunch that lasted about a minute and that the para was great and on top of making sure she was safe and that it made him sad to see and that Edda was a bit worn out and sleepy now.

Edda lost her guanine pendant from her necklace in the past few weeks. As you might know, she is missing a single guanine from her DNA which messed up a really important protein. So I replace it with jewelry. And she keeps losing it (well she’s almost 16 now, we’ve probably gone through 4 sets of necklaces) which seems symbolic to me, and I keep replacing it. So I got a new shiny cytosine.

We closed out the week with red, white and blue day for #WoottonStrong!

Vince was not feeling well on Friday and stayed home from school. He’d been preparing a lot for Mr. RM on Friday night (not that he was running for Mr. RM), and had to miss that. He was bummed. He seems better today.

I’m bummed (upset) that he’s going to probably have to pick a college sight unseen. Jeremy kind of admonished me to think that we’d have him travel during the pandemic if schools were closed, but I was like – just to see it! Even if the campus is closed! What about the cities? Couldn’t he get a feel for Minneapolis or Toronto? Vince took it in stride and said it’ll be fine, he’s watching videos, though he acknowledged that the promo videos might cherry pick highlights. Like in Minnesota – only beautiful days and short sleeves are shown in the videos. Hmmm…

We had Edda’s IEP meeting on Thursday, I came bearing six tubs of Clorox wipes. The IEP meeting was uneventful, sometimes they surprise you with things that you weren’t expecting (like cutting services), but this time it was a keep everything the same meeting.

You can look at this local news clip of my hospital prepping for COVID-19. I’m not sure it is completely reassuring. We do have cases now in MD. And I know that one of the confirmed cases visited the Villages in Rockville about 3 miles from the house and about a mile from Edda’s school. I’m nervous and not so much at the same time.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/holy-cross-hospital-prepares-isolation-rooms-for-coronavirus/2230594

I just remembered Joe Biden is fine! Totally fine!

It is spirit week for inclusion at Edda’s school. For example, Monday was PJ day to put offensive language to sleep. Tuesday was Jersey day to team up for inclusion. Normally, I think this is a bunch of malarkey, but what the heck, I went the totally opposite direction. This might be the last bit of fun we have before we are all quarantined in the house eating our rice & beans. Edda wore her eggs and bacon PJs on Monday:

Megan Rapinoe for Jersey day on Tuesday. I got her an RBG shirt for super hero Thursday.

We went to Vince’s last scout meeting on Tuesday night. You age-out of scouts when you turn 18 and Vince’ll be 18 on Monday. So no more Tuesday scout meetings anymore for us. Vince’s cohort has been one-by-one aging out this year. He’s finishing out as senior patrol leader, meaning he’s the one standing who has been standing in front of the room leading the planning and the meetings since summer last year. He gave a very moving speech (which I did not record because I was almost crying) about how much scouting meant to him and he encouraged the other boys to continue on their scouting path though Vince did acknowledge privately to us that he did not know how much longer the scouting organization will continue on. And this we do not know either.

Vince did put in the work for his Eagle Scout and should get it at the meeting on March 20th. I got behind a little on the sewing and you can see that the last three merit badges on his sash are stapled on. But I eased the staples out and I’ve hand sewed them back on. Vince did the minimum number of merit badges necessary for Eagle. He was never into getting the merit badges – he loved the camping, the parking at the fair, etc. I was worried he wasn’t going to be able to pull it off, but I shouldn’t have worried.

College update: Last we left off, Vince was still excited about studying ChemE at Minnesota. He got into Toronto as a chemistry/physics student and he was kind of indifferent. He said he’d rather be an engineer. But then both sets of grandparents chimed in and said – Toronto’s a great school, he shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. We mentioned this to Vince. He looked at us and said – you aren’t making me go to Toronto are you? Other kids’ parents are making them do Powerpoint presentations about how they want to go to a school that their parents don’t approve of, you aren’t going to make me do a presentation are you? We said – no we aren’t making you do anything, we are just encouraging you to visit Toronto. You might as well get a trip out of it. He said OK to the trip. We had already scheduled a trip to Minnesota (with Jeremy on a business trip) and we tacked on a flight from Minnesota to Toronto (by himself) for a few days. Then I got worried. I can’t send him across the border with the COVID virus going around. He’ll get stuck on the other side. But then on Tuesday night at the scout meeting, he found out Toronto gave him a generous scholarship, probably worth about a year’s tuition/fees etc, and then Vince’s interest in Toronto immediately skyrocketed. It was a very exciting night. So the visit to Toronto is immediately more compelling. I’m not sure if anyone is traveling anywhere two weeks from now. Jeremy is all confused – he’s like – I thought he wanted to be an engineer! What happened to that? Anyways, that’s the college update for now. He did also get into UCSC (Santa Cruz) which doesn’t have an engineering dept, he got in as a Biomolecular & Bioinformatics major or something like that. There is almost no chance he’s going there, but it did not stop him from asking to visit. I’m like – you aren’t going to go there and he said, it’s beautiful there, I want to visit.

What is there to say? I went to work yesterday and there was a general feeling of unpreparedness. There was no new protocol except for the general public protocol – wash hands, don’t come to work if you are sick, etc., etc. But all of us are a bit freaked out. I had a post surgical patient who wanted to leave the hospital as fast as possible and as I was discharging her she asked if I was scared and I said of course I’m scared, I’m still human, how can I not be scared? We actually have very few febrile patients and/or respiratory distress patients on our unit. (Not that I don’t get coughed on. I do get coughed on.) You have to be pretty healthy to be on our floor – we have a lot of post surgical patients (hysterectomy, bowel resection, appendix, etc) and we do have lots of people with infections – but usually they are blood borne or in a wound or like their arm is swollen and red with cellulitis. The gossip at the hospital was that we had a patient in the ED on Saturday with COVID-19, but I shrugged and said I don’t think the house lab has any test kits yet to confirm. We seemed to have enough protective gear supplies (I think), but that could be an illusion.

I had to tell one of my coworkers to stop touching her face. Everytime I passed her in the hall she was touching her gd face! I’m like – you gotta stop that – and she said once I had pointed it out to her, she noticed she was touching her face all the time. This is the one habit I’m trying to break. No touching of my face, especially at work, but at all in general. It’s not easy. I always rub my eyes, pick at my nose, rest my chin in my hands at a table.

Christine says NIH has cleared the “Ebola” floor for this pandemic. Seth’s work has cancelled all travel and had a very stern note saying to not come to work with *any* symptoms no matter how mild. Jeremy went to the Chinese market and they are completely out of rice (except for 4 bags of brown rice which Jeremy may have bought one). Just on Saturday, we booked a solo trip for Vince to visit U of Toronto which now seems will not happen along with the trip to U of Minn (which was in conjunction with Jeremy’s business trip to Minneapolis which probably needs to be canceled as well). I was worried that Vince would get sealed off from me across the Canadian border and he’d be 18 then, which I couldn’t decide was a good or bad thing. I’m afraid that he’ll be picking a college sight unseen which is not the best way to spend an extremely large amount of money, but what the heck, it’s a minor problem in the grand scheme of things. In the next four weeks, we were planning on personally hosting 4 parties – each one larger than the next, 15 people, 40 people, 100 people and 125 people. I think these parties are not going to happen. Edda’s teacher emailed parents to please buy hand sanitizers and clorox wipes for the classroom. Beloved grandparents, take good care of yourselves <3.

I was not a supporter of Mayor Pete, but somehow with him dropping out, I feel adrift and unhappy (maybe also because it overlaps with the pandemic). It seems clear that the choice for us Dems will be between Biden/Sanders – maybe Bloomberg depending on how his ads help him on Super Tues. Really? A bunch of old, white men? This is the best we can do?