Monday, Self-Isolation Day #17
Please continue to pray for my husband's mother D. on a ventilator in ICU with confirmed COVID-19. We very much appreciate it, even though we are choosing not to give detailed, blow-by-blow health updates in this public forum.
The emotional stress is getting to me and the veneer is cracking.
I spent two hours on the phone this morning trying to facilitate a Virtual Doctor's Visit for a rash on one of the children's arms (likely plant contact). The medical staff is trying to figure out all this new technology, as are we patients. I made probably ten phone calls for tech support and probably spoke to almost that many staff people. You can imagine my interior state by the end of two hours, although I remained very polite and encouraging.
I lost my entire school day as a result. You veteran homeschool mom knows that if you lose those golden first hours to TV-as-babysitter and general negligence, it's just nigh impossible to get school back on track.
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| Mary teaching catechism in the garage |
I was short-tempered, I was barking.
I cleaned the garage. I mean cleaned. Organized. Swept. Made my donation pile.
I may not have control of anything in my life, including pandemics that are touching our family extremely closely and now I fear will take us all down, but I can have a clean garage, don'ttellmeIcan't.
I get to look at this beauty in our back yard . . .
After dinner of random frozen pre-packaged foods, I took the younger set of children on a social distancing neighborhood walk. They ran free in innocent pleasure.
Please don't take away even the walks outside our front door.
Today our neighborhood rec club shut down its tennis courts: tennis is too close to other human beings. I don't even play tennis, but it's depressing.
Honey, one of my coworkers used to tell me that "you can only do what you can do." You can't heal D from COVID-19, but cleaning your garage is something you can do and hey, you've got your donation pile ready when the shelter-in-place orders are lifted. (I'm cleaning out my closet this week if it makes you feel any better.) The activity also works off some of the nervous energy. It's part of why they tell anxious people to take up needlework--having something in your hands can be therapeutic. (Walks are also good as is pacing.)
ReplyDeleteSomething you can do: do a family rosary for D over Zoom, and have Chris or his dad or one of the siblings let D's nurses know to tell her when they go in to take care of her. ICU nurses are a special breed, and I watched my kiddo's nurses talk to him a lot when he was on the ventilator 9 years ago. When I was visiting my former husband's parishioners on ICU's, I'd see their nurses do the same.
Your Latin Mass community has a youth group, right? They can do a Rosary over Zoom for D as well.
As for the situation with the doctor's office, I feel your pain. I'm having to do almost everything (including physical therapy appointments!) over Zoom and the phone, and there is definitely a learning curve. It's probably a good thing that I had to learn to use Zoom for one of my classes because I'm now having to teach everyone how to use it!
Last thing: fast from the media if necessary. (I'm saying this as someone with anxiety.) I've looked at your county and state public health websites--they are pretty beefy in the information they provide and all of it is consistent with best practices across the nation. The North Carolina state one even has information on hydroxychloroquine! (I'm familiar with the medication as it is used for rheumatoid issues, and it is one that I refuse to take because of the liver side effects.) Check those sites daily, but don't feel like you need to watch every press briefing on things.
Hang in there. As hard as it is to hear, the only things you can really do is pray because the virus has to run its course, and they can only just treat symptoms at this point. What the ventilator will do is give D's lungs a rest so they can heal and she can have a fighting chance. D is in my prayers and if you are amenable to it, I can add her to my (Episcopal) parish's prayer list.