By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (190)

January 22, 2024

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 4, Day 293: It’s a holiday Monday, but not a day off work for me, so we were going to do a bit of juggling today. PiC was going to take the kids to play somewhere so I could get work done, I was going to have therapy. Then we’d have the contractor stop by to finish up a project. However. We thought we were approaching the clear on Saturday because Smol Acrobat had stopped vomiting (Zofran, a miracle drug), and Sera’s bloodwork came back with NOT dire results. We ran her back to the vet for more diagnostics and agreed on a treatment plan for the following week. I was still coaxing her to eat, unsuccessfully. Overnight, both PiC and then JB became very ill.

Most of Sunday was set to extreme hard mode. PiC had fever and chills with an upset GI, JB was throwing up and wiped out, Sera hadn’t managed to eat anything in two days. Smol Acrobat still wasn’t well but their energy level was back up to a nine out of ten. I was up at 5 am changing out sheets and doing laundry, calling the nurse to get a prescription, resettling JB in a new nest of clean bedding. Grabbed a short nap and then was back at it minding Smol Acrobat, picking up prescriptions, cooking food for Sera that she could tolerate, keeping Smol Acrobat out of everyone else’s hair. They missed JB a lot and kept peeking over at the nest every so often. I had to carefully ration my energy, and still crashed by 3 pm after putting Smol down for a late nap. Thankfully, they slept, JB slept, and PiC slept. Even Sera settled down to sleep. I managed to get a couple hours of rest before everyone was awake again. For the first time ever, I told JB they could watch TV however long they wanted because we just needed to survive. I managed to steal a few minutes to finish an email draft from Dec 23 to a dear dear friend S about shared health issues, updating her briefly on our status and the reason I wasn’t sending one of our usual long emails just yet. I promised her a new batch of pictures of the kids soon.

Which brought me to today. Everyone seemed to be improving a little bit. PiC was able to get up and walk Sera and play with Smol Acrobat. I was able to catch up on a few things and as I wandered back down the hall to get Smol to put them down for a nap, I saw an email from dear dear friend’s daughter. We have never spoken before, but I knew her name, and when I saw the subject line my brain glitched. I skimmed the brief email, sat down in the hallway and sobbed and sobbed. My dear dear friend of 20 years had a stroke and died three days ago. I am devastated. I’m still crying. She was so loved, even though we only ever saw each other in person once, in all our long friendship, and we cherished each other. She was my biggest cheerleader when I doubted myself, she gave me so much encouragement with the kids when I was sad or scared or worried. She could reassure me in the most loving ways and make me laugh. She could take a look at one of the kid’s pictures and see their entire personalities and tell me all about it – a rarity in my experience. Most people just see the superficial. She saw their souls, and she was accurate, too. She supported my Lakota project, shared it with friends and family, and I could FEEL her beaming with pride at me whenever we talked about it. Emailing with her was like getting a great big hug. I don’t know what to make of a world without my dear dear friend in it.

I’ve cried rivers trying to write a proper remembrance worthy of her for her family.

Year 4, Day 294: I’m not ready to face a world without my friend in it. I don’t know what to do with all my “I need to tell S about this” moments. The realization that I’ve been living in a world without her in it for a few days, I just didn’t know it at the time, just stings. Life has to keep moving on despite my desire to quit today and I hate that too.

Sera’s scheduled to start her first course of steroids today. We’ve used them for Seamus frequently enough to know the drill – lots of water, lots of walks. But Sera’s never had them before, and she doesn’t have any signal to ask to go outside either because she just waits for me to take her when I’m ready, so I set a timer to take her out every 2 hours today to make sure she’s comfortable. Turns out she was not on board with this plan! She didn’t need to pee that urgently so by the fourth outing, she was visibly disgusted with me. Her disgusted look is pretty funny. Her appetite is coming back nicely, though. That is a huge relief.

Year 4, Day 295: Smol Acrobat bunked with me last night because they had a painful tummy. Turns out, they had two large servings of a smoothie at daycare. Sigh. They aren’t yet allowed to have dairy and that got by all of us. That resulted in them waking at 3 am with a screaming tantrum (them) that could not be soothed. I just had to wait it out. I used part of that time to take Sera out in case she needed to pee. She didn’t but she was restless anyway so we all were having a night of it.

My friend’s memorial was tonight. I didn’t intend to speak, I didn’t want to show my face while a sheer sobbing mess, but ended up deciding to anyway. I wouldn’t have if it were in person but being remote made it possible to attend and possible to speak when I changed my mind at the last second. It didn’t feel good, exactly, but it felt like I should.

I completely hit the wall this evening. With piles and piles of work still left, my mind and body were utterly spent from this week. There was nothing left to dig deep into for a third shift after the kids were in bed. I just cleared out a small handful of low-brain commitment items and stumbled into bed to sleep for a solid 9 hours. Luckily, it was a rare night of calm for Smol Acrobat, too.

Year 4, Day 296: This was another running off my feet day. Sera needed her two medications, three meals and four walks. I had four medications and an appointment. JB needed to be picked up and taken to an after school activity, then we had to pick up takeout and run home for the PTA meeting. All this on only two boiled eggs and a bite of quiche because the throat sores from my body overreacting to viral infection bombardment hurt so much that drinking water feels like swallowing knives. The ENT prescribed a lidocaine solution that tastes like uck to numb part of the throat for a few minutes. I wish I could lidocaine my whole throat for a day. Might make eating difficult but at least it wouldn’t feel like I’m a very badly trained sword swallower!

One moment that stood out from all the rushing about. When we picked up food, we caught sight of a mom holding an infant and a sign just as we drove out of the parking lot. I had $0 on me, having tipped at another place generously, and I couldn’t safely stop when I saw her either. JB and I talked about it on the short drive home and we both felt so strongly that we raced into the house to find some cash. JB threw some food into a bag to share. They also brandished their only $2 they had in their piggy bank but I told them to keep that, we’d give family money. Unfortunately, when we drove back, the lady was gone. We drove around the lot to see if she’d just relocated but didn’t find her. We hope they’re ok. I hate when I’m caught out like that. Online it’s much easier to give. Offline I rarely have cash on hand at the same time that I run into people who need it.

It was a full-drain sort of day but it ended on such a wonderful surprise. A dear friend sent me the most beautiful amazing gorgeous duffel bag she made for me. It’s been a year in the making and it shows in every stitch and detail. The fabric texture and colors are luscious, she quilted it herself, the custom zipper pulls are a perfect complement. I’m so honored to have such a caring and talented friend that would make this work of art in the shape of a practical object that I can admire and use.

Year 4, Day 297: I’m making adjustments to Sera’s medication regimen as we go along. We’ve given the am/pm meds 8 hours apart and 12 hours apart on different days, we had no mishaps then. But yesterday’s dosing was ten hours apart, the last dose was with a late dinner, and she was retching bile this morning. Usually that happens when their stomach is empty too long. My suspicion is she needs the second dose earlier in the day because it must trigger the intense hunger a few hours later. So the evening dinner satisfies the hunger that the pill creates. Just to be safe, I’ll also add a midnight snack.

We have two weeks of this fiddly meal and meds management at the high dose. Cross your fingers that this kicks her system back into functioning order, if you would? We’ll do bloodwork at the 2 week point to see where her values are. If they improve, we can reduce the dosage, and of course that should help reduce the side effects. I’ll be doing a lot more reading of the Merck Manual between now and then.

Today was the first day I had to mostly work uninterrupted for several hours. I still ran two loads of laundry, cleaned the robot vacuum, ran the dishwasher, ran the robot vacuum, and medicated, walked and fed Sera 🐶, but I also managed to keep my butt in the seat for enough hours to catch up on a week’s worth of work that had been pushed as we recuperated and grieved and attempted to find stability again. It required some after hours work but I got there in the end.

A dear friend is running a charity race again, if you’re able to support her, in support of the Junior League of New Orleans.

BTW, if you don’t yet own Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, there’s an amazing Humble Bundle right now. I couldn’t read any for comfort earlier this week, but I’m going to appreciate it this weekend.

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