Inside the Pandemic, Day 17

 Wednesday, April 29, 2020

In news of a personal note, my son had to be admitted to the hospital today. He’s been struggling with several significant health problems. He has rheumatoid arthritis which has destroyed both his hips (the doctors say they look like the hips of an 80 year old). He’ll need them replaced, but the doctors won’t do that until they diagnose his stomach issues. He’s had vomiting and diarrhea for months and after going through every other medical cause, they believe he has Crohn’s Disease or IBS, but can’t tell without a GI scope. Of course we couldn’t get the scope because it is an “elective” procedure and they cancelled all of those due to COVID-19. I know he’s not the only one with health issues that has been affected by this pandemic, but he’s MY one and it’s killing me to see him so skinny, weak and in pain. On top of those two things, his body’s so worn down that he’s been getting cellulitis (skin infection) in his feet and has to have IV antibiotics daily to stop the infection. 

The other way the pandemic affects me is that I can’t be with him in the hospital. Previously, when he’s been admitted, I went with him and stayed with him most of the time. Now, they won’t even let me in the hall. He’s called several times from the hospital, near tears because he’s lonely, fearful and in tremendous pain and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s so very hard. If I could take from him all those complaints I would bear them willingly. A 19 year old boy/man should not have to deal with any of that!

I’ve been walking about five miles  a day (for me it is 11,261 steps) just to burn off my nervous energy. It helps me sleep, sort of, but I don’t think I’ll be sleeping very much tonight--worried about my son!

Inside the Pandemic, Day 16

 Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Thankfully, we are almost at the end of April! It’s been such a long month due to many things; the quarantine, my son’s illness, my daughter’s lack of job, my husband and I working from home, missing out on all the school activities that would normally be this month. I am glad to say that it looks like the stay at home order will be lifted on May 3 (Wheat). That means that slowly, slowly, the restaurants, theaters, hairdressers/barbers and all the other small businesses that have survived the shutdown will open back up. It’s going to look strange for a while as we maintain social distancing, but I’m really looking forward to it. 

This morning I took the dog on a walk, as usual, then went downstairs to do a lower body weight routine, but was confronted by a sewage backup. So I cleaned that up instead. So gross--I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Now my basement is cleaned and sanitized, though. I hope to do the weight workout later today--I’m trying to stick to twice a week weights (lower on Tuesday, upper on Friday) as well as walking and jogging. Speaking of which, I was walking down Oregon street yesterday, listening to my new Stephen King book, when who should pull into a parking space ahead of me but Alijah Collins! We had a short chat (he was on his way to work) and it was so nice to see a former student that it made my whole day brighter. 

Inside the Pandemic, Day 15

 Thursday, April 23, 2020

As the kids say, it’s day 30270509 of quarantine and I’m doing the same thing I was doing yesterday (“What’s that Brain?” “Planning to take over the world, Pinky!”) Went down to Walmart this morning and most people were wearing masks. I may not understand how masks work well, but I do think they are more effective in protecting you if they actually cover your nose and mouth. Many people were “wearing” their masks pulled down to their chins. Minimally effective, I would say. I wore one of the home-made ones I sewed up from a plan on the internet. I tried to cite one just now, but the one I used won’t cite. They are easy to find if you just search “make your own mask”. 

Last night I talked to my parents, who are elderly and thus at high risk. My mother (a diabetic, obsese and in poor health anyway) has Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (or ITP), which is an immune disease where her body attacks her platelets and makes her bruise and bleed easily (Immune). It is treated with steroids, and sometimes an IV infusion. Her sister has it as well and when I called her last night she said her platelet count was 17 (it should be 70 or so). 

Inside the Pandemic, Day 14

 Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Had a really interesting Zoom seminar on dyslexia yesterday. Unfortunately, I was unable to see anything on my computer, so I called in, which meant that I was on the phone for four hours yesterday. Probably a record for me. The instructor was really good about referring to things on the slides for people who couldn’t see. I was able to dart out to the internet and look up the things to which she was referring so that I could understand what she was talking about. **Humble-brag** I took six pages of notes. However, I feel like it just touched the tip of the iceberg about knowing how to work with dyslexic students at the high school level. Luckily, she referred to two books that should be helpful--they’re on my TBR list!

Right now I’m reading a book by Temple Grandin, Animals Make Us Human. If you don’t know who she is, Grandin is an autistic woman who developed systems to help make animal care (and slaughter) more humane--primarily based on the “squeeze box” she developed to help her deal with her own autistic symptoms. You can find more about her at her website, templegrandin.com. I’ve read the chapters about dogs, cats and horses so far. Even though I don’t care about horses, it was interesting reading. She and my students have in common that she often writes things like “I’ll tell you about that later,” or “Now I’m going to talk about . . .” Perhaps that’s just her style, but I find that it takes me out of the text. A bit distracting.

In world news, many countries/states are talking about ending quarantine. President Trump has encouraged (by Tweet) residents of at least three states to protest the “draconian” measures created by the quarantine.  Mostly, people are out of work and unable to afford to live and support their families. This is an especially hard time for those who are in service industries that have been closed for months. My sister is in that boat, though as a single parent she is eligible for both unemployment and the stimulus payment of $600 per week made to people who are out of work. 

The COVID-19 confirmed case count is up to 2,585,468 world-wide with 178,845 deaths. There is a lot of talk about “flattening the curve” which means that we (the world) want to reduce the growth of new cases. It’s hard to tell if that is happening or not--hard to look at the big picture when you are a tiny dot of paint in a pointillism canvas being created. An ABC article recently said that it’s beginning to happen (Dastmalchi). We’ll see. Below is a graph from the same article indicating what will happen if we continue social distancing, washing hands, wearing masks, etc (blue) versus just going back to the way things were before the virus (red). Blue, people, blue!

 

Inside the Pandemic, Day 13

 Tuesday, April 21, 2020

One of the (very few) positive outcomes of being in quarantine, is that I have more time for things I like to do (like walking, gardening and being with my kiddos). So, I decided that since one of the things I like to do is to learn, I would take advantage of some of the many free online educational opportunities. My first step was going to classcentral.com which is an aggregate site that shows college-level courses offered for free. I browsed through and found quite a number of courses I was interested in. The one that caught my eye first, though, was one on finding happiness. Since this is quite the valuable commodity right now, I figured I’d give it a try.

The course is taught by an Indian man who also teaches at the University of Texas in the business department. In the first lesson, we’re investigating what happiness is and how it differs from other kinds of success (academic and career). The first article is about a longitudinal study done on a group of Harvard graduates over 75 years and it came to five conclusions: 1) Love matters more than anything, 2) Contentment is more important than money or power, 3) Happiness can be learned, 4) Social connection is vital to happiness, and 5) Challenges and the perspective they offer help make you happier (in the long run). This is interesting stuff so far. 

Inside the Pandemic, Day 12

 Monday, April 20, 2020

So, Monday again in quarantine. Today is the day I have class meetings and, as before, no one showed up to my first freshman meeting. True, they are not required to, but it is a little strange to be there “by myself”. I use it as a time to make a general announcement about what happened in our staff meeting, address any issues with assignments and then have team building of some sort. Most of the students that show up to these meetings are keeping busy with school work and some sort of physical activity. I try to do something physical each day as well. Lately it has been gardening. 

Saturday and Sunday I moved a pallet of pea gravel to cover some of the back half of the property. I actually ran out of gravel and will need about six more bags to finish the area I was working on, but I got a good start on it. We live on two lots and most of the second lot is garden that had been left to go to seed for years. It has pretty solid hardscaping, but so, so many weeds. At least I know that’s always an option to keep myself busy!

COVID-19 is still progressing across the US, though it seems to be slowing everywhere except Africa where it is picking up speed. In the world, we’re up to 2,435,876 confirmed cases with 167,592 deaths (Center for Systems). In the USA 749,666 people have been confirmed to have COVID and almost 4,000,000 people have been tested (out of 328.2 million, so about 1% of all people in the US have been tested). Denmark recently asked elementary school students to go back to school while maintaining social distancing protocols (Gargiulo). Some parents have refused to bring their children to school and it’s an ongoing social experiment to be sure. Here in Horton, KS, we’re out for the year, but school is still on-going virtually with varied levels of success. 

NOTE: Just re-read my April 3 entry. Today we’ve more than doubled our confirmed cases. This is NOT the direction in which we want to go, people! Stay home, save lives!

Inside the Pandemic, Day 11

 Friday, April 17, 2020

End of the work week. The assignments are trickling in and grading has begun for the weekend. Quarantine grading is different from in-school grading because I don’t get big chunks of assignments all at once. They come in dribs and drabs, so I can save them up and grade them all at once or grade them as they come in. I usually do a combination of the two. 

In other news, it snowed last night, so this is the snow we woke up to this morning. Sadly, I can’t go out and garden today, but the temperature is supposed to go up later this week, so I should be able to get out and garden. 

A little COVID update: 2,196,109 confirmed cases world-wide with 149, 024 deaths. In the US 3,423,034 have been tested, 54,703 have recovered but 28,998 have died. Our governor has issued another stay-at-home order until May 3. So, there’s that.