One of my wife’s sisters is on end-of-life support at the moment. One of the woman’s daughters (who is a critical care nurse) has been visiting her regularly in Colorado (from Minneapolis) over the past couple of years as she has slowly declined. The other daughter wanted nothing to do with her (issues from childhood and adulthood with her bi-polar mother). Now the nurse daughter can’t fly out to see her at the end, as her presence is required at her hospital, and flying is too much exposure to COVID. The other daughter is an airline pilot and has her own plane, so she has flown out to stay to the end. My wife, who, while also having had long issues with this sister, is nevertheless a forgiving and caring person, would like to say final goodbyes even though the woman is basically comatose. Plane travel is, of course, out of the question, and it’s unlikely she would be allowed inside the facility anyway. It’s weighing heavily on her.
I’m so sorry, Chefguy. That is a heartbreaking situation. 
Not as bad as some, but my employment at the hotel has been suspended for an indefinite time - 13 April at the earliest. Same for everyone but management - and probably some of those as well.
sigh Well, I’ve been an advocate for distancing and lockdown, so I’m (mostly) good with it, and slightly amused as well.
Last night the King proclaimed a curfew. Nobody out & about from 19.00 to 06.00. The mess hall is feeding me in clamshell foam plates and I am eating on a picnic table outside. Emirates, a very large airline is shutting down for three weeks.
I am supposed to fly out on a final-exit visa on 30 March. Fat chance. I will be here with no job and no way out for some unknown period.
A friend was scheduled for a mastectomy last week due to early stage breast cancer.
She was in the parking garage when they called to cancel: not because of COVID19, but because her doctor had injured herself that morning and was unable to operate. "
She has no clue when it’ll get rescheduled. Hopefully things like cancer will still be handled.
I was just chatting with an acquaintance and had a DUH! moment: she has a 3 year old with special needs (autism). With schools being completely cancelled here in Virginia… not only is mom stuck home with 3 kids (2 of the 3 have issues) with no respite whatsoever, their services are likely stopped in their tracks. That’s a pretty big impact right there.
Just moved into an RV park on the grounds on a hotel and casino in Laughlin NV. All casinos shut down by the state until Apr 17. All the casino signs are working but parking lots are empty and hotel windows are dark. Not much traffic, there is little business other than the casinos. Most of the restaurants are in the casinos, so very few places to eat. We are here to visit relatives, no other reason to be here.
The college where I teach was originally going to cancel all classes only on Mar. 18 and 19 so the faculty could–get this–go to the computer labs on campus for Canvas workshops in case they wanted to learn more about how to use it for the impending remote instruction.
The higher-ups wised up and the msg came down at 6pm on Mar. 16, telling everyone that all classes are canceled from Mar. 17 to Mar. 28 to give faculty time to restructure things, get used to Canvas, give students and faculty a chance to regroup, etc. Some faculty will need loaner laptops. Some students will need better tech at home too, since phones don’t always cut it. And, you know, other complications abound. Remote instruction (classes resume but not in person) as of Mar. 29, so far.
We were told in my dept. not to make anything due until after Mar. 28. That’s fine. I need time to figure out how I can get students and myself through this; cannot make them pay to watch films I was going to show in class so now have to find free films via the college library collections; doing faculty meetings via Zoom; and I also took on a third class for which I had already been subbing since the professor/friend of mine has been in and out of the hospital, and sometimes incoherent, due to blacking out after driving over a bump and then getting in a wreck, waking up bruised all over and half her head shaved because they had to do a craniotomy to deal with a brain bleed. She is not supposed to do any kind of work for a while, certainly not remote teaching.
My housemate/cousin, meanwhile, is on the warpath: I went out shopping last Friday and was made to wear a N95 mask which her nursing mgr. mom let us have (we disinfected it for re-use; we have more but she had to give them back to her mom because medical folks need them far more than we do), plus gloves, carry hand sanitizer, and when I got back home, had to take off jacket and pants and shirt and throw them into the dryer on high and then go take a shower while cuz sprayed the car with Lysol as well as my purse and all the grocery items and the bags.
I still go for walks while staying a good distance away from my neighbor /walking partner.
I am just dismayed by some family members who think it’s all much ado about very little, especially the anti-vaxxing, homeschooling niece who fancies herself an expert on the whole thing. She texted to the family group thread: “Their math doesn’t add up because they aren’t doing accurate base infection numbers.”
What dafuq does that MEAN?
She also says she is concerned about grandma because flu shots increase the risk of contracting coronaviruses. (What gran actually got was a pneumonia shot, but you know, vaxes are vaxes and they are all evil to the aforementioned niece.)
One of her cousins posts that the whole thing is no big deal, just like any other old virus, Vicks Vaporub works on viruses like kryptonite and he will be just fine because he grew up drinking water from a garden hose and playing in the dirt.
Work is the least of my worries, I suppose. At home I feel like Meryl Streep in Silkwood, running the risk of having to scrub until I’m raw if I make the mistake of bringing anything into the house without disinfecting it first. In terms of the fam, the ones I just mentioned are filling my gut with anxiety. I swear I had an attack of akathisia today.
Glad you asked?
Really not too badly compared to some people. My HOA closed the gym and pool the day after I mentioned to my wife how grateful I was to have them handy, as up until then I was working out much more consistently than I had been in years. Now I might have to take up running…grrr!..Maybe after the mornings get a little warmer, I will.
More painful is the fact that my online library app somehow logged me out of the library, and now I can’t log back in. My PIN gets rejected though I don’t remember ever changing it from the default, which would be the last four digits of my phone number. And now the libraries are closed.
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They don’t have a way to reset that online? Bummer.
New Zealand is going to Level-4 tomorrow night for four weeks - only essential shops open, essential workers at work, everyone else has to stay at home. Schools are closed (upcoming school holidays have been brought forward by two weeks), and travel restrictions are in place.
I will continue to work remotely, so I went to work today and grabbed two monitors from my desk so I now have a full desk setup which makes my wife a whole lot happier - she thought I was too hunched up and squinting. It’ll probably help my neck, as well.
We are in for an interesting time …
Victoria and NSW are about to go into lockdown tomorrow night - nearly all the other Australian states are closing state borders (except to goods trucks)
That pratt Morrison is trying to engage in a dick-waving contest with the State premiers about whether kids go to school after Easter or not (our Term 1 just finished a few days early and the States generally want to keep them shut for Term 2). Oh, and also keeps contradicting the smarter more knowledgeable people about how much physical isolation people should be doing, generally in the ‘eh, go ahead, you’ll be fine’ direction
I have dozens of juicy ripe figs on the tree in the backyard that I can’t ethically give away to anyone…
Yum! Do you have supplies and ingredients to make jam or chutney? (You’ll use it surprisingly quickly!)
Learned yesterday that my workplace is not actually closed; only my department (and the people involved in the exposure incident) are working from home. We’ve now run into the issue of how to digitally sign documents; there’s no official procedure in place for this.
Took a dog to the vet last night. They came out to meet us in the parking lot, and actually wound up treating the dog on the sidewalk. (He’d eaten part of a football and was having trouble passing it, so they “helped” him. Could’ve done that at home).
I’m still at work (placing orders for a lab that tests the virus). I’m willing now to stay home but I just don’t know how I can do my job without access to office machines. And placing orders is not the only thing I do.
Son’s girlfriend out of work. I suppose it’s only a matter of time until all the kids are asking for help with the bills.
My girlfriend is quarantined. I’ll probably be furloughed before too long.
My daughter is a nurse, working in a very busy hospital. My son is a corrections officer in a Florida prison on lockdown with presumed cases in the facility.
I wish my kids were out of work and asking for help.
Why on earth not? If your neighborhood has a Facebook group or other way of communicating electronically, there’s no reason you couldn’t post “got free figs, lemme know if you want them”, then put a bagful of them outside your front door.
I had an appointment with my primary care doc - routine followup, nothing urgent - for April 2. I also needed all my prescriptions refilled. I messaged them yesterday saying “hey, heard you were rescheduling all routine stuff, need my drugz”. Hopefully they will get the scrips sorted out; I actually have enough for a month but I have to use a mail-order pharmacy and since deliveries are being slowed down on other things, I’d like some wiggle room.
They rescheduled my appointment for April 30, then a little while later called me to say they were going to do virtual appointments, so they’re emailing me a link to get that set up. Luckily I have a BP cuff at home and can also do spot checks of blood sugar; can have my phone get pulse and O2 readings, though obviously doc can’t listen to my heart or lungs. Well, I’ll know if my asthma is flaring.
I’d like to discuss a change in blood pressure meds - there’s a Lancet article that sheds some light on why people with hypertension / diabetes may get hit harder. Basically it has to do with being on an ACE inhibitor or an ARB (which is related; I was put on an ARB when the ACE caused severe side effects). Those are often used for hypertension in people with diabetes because they are supposed to help protect the kidneys.
I worked from home before all this. I went out to lunch nearly every day just to get out of the house for a bit. I don’t do that anymore.
Yeah; her sister died this morning. The daughter who is a nurse browbeat them into doing a test for COVID, as she was exhibiting all the symptoms. Why they didn’t do that voluntarily is a mystery. The other daughter will self-quarantine until the results are back. At least her mother didn’t die alone.
They do, but they say my card number isn’t associated with any of my email accounts. That’s almost certainly true; I don’t remember for sure that I ever gave them one, or if I did I peobably had to write it into a form, and of course with my chicken scratch handwriting they entered it wrong. Not their fault of course.
But none of that explains why none of the handful of PINs I use works.
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Oh no. I am so sorry to hear that.