Life in the Time of Quarantine

Hi Everyone -

Hope you're all hanging in there, enjoying being at home as much as you can, staying safe, washing your hands and faces.  Is your mental health ok?  Have you gotten any fresh air?  I know that might be hard for some people.  It has been over a month since my last blog post, but that was certainly not for lack of trying.  I've started to write several times in the past few weeks but the Coronavirus Pandemic has actually left me speechless. (Shocking, I know.)  I can't go to my usual coffee shop where I like to write and life has been turned upside-down, just like I'm sure it has been for anyone reading this.  I'm not a scientist and won't pretend to know anything about the virus itself.  I've never been more aware of how much I touch my own face - and even still I probably don't notice it more than half of the time. I'm not on the front lines fighting this, so don't let the masked image later in this post fool you.  I'm spending most of my time in isolation at home when I'm not in the clinic with occasional stops at the grocery store as needed.  Writing a blog post hasn't been on my priority list because I couldn't decide what to write about in the shadow of a global pandemic. As a writer friend recently told me, sometimes you just need to sit and write, let it flow, and see what happens.

Writing is an outlet for me.  I use it to help organize my thoughts and relieve stresses.  It offers an opportunity to be creative, use different areas of my brain, share ideas, highlight things I'm learning, and to show support for causes that matter to me.  At a time when I'm also not seeing my usual collection of mental health providers and also not going to the gym, the sudden and total removal of so many outlets has been a big deal. It helps to know that everyone else is in the same boat.  Nobody else is going to the gym.  We're all working out in our laundry rooms with whatever we have at home or going for walks in the neighborhood.  I've heard of people doing lots of different crafts, trying out meditation apps, yoga in the home, new types of exercise, and some people are buying pets in order to find novel coping methods. You're not alone...we're in this together!

So I'm writing today.  Without having any planned direction or goals.  I've seen a post going around on Facebook that people want to remember what was happening because this is going to be a historical event.  My parents remember when JFK was assassinated and my friends and I all remember where we were on 9-11.  This will be another memorable event for so many people... and nobody will forget where they were because we've all been on our couches for three weeks already!  So this is not my usual blog-writing approach. Welcome to my stream of consciousness.  My apologies for being scatterbrained.

At the beginning, I thought this was challenging because I felt trapped with nowhere to go.  My family is far away.  I was still seeing patients early on and didn't want to risk getting anyone sick. The first week I saw friends who had already started working from home, but then it seemed wrong for me to be around them.  Once I got into a rhythm, particularly with regular afternoon FaceTime gatherings, things started to improve.  The hardest moments have been worrying about my friends who work on the front lines, concerns about my parents and not being able to help them, and realizing that the Final Four was not going to occur.  This weekend should have been the Women's Basketball National Championship - often referred to as my favorite holiday.  Several of my friends here in Seattle have been connived into outings at random bars around the city to watch games with me.  I'm more than happy to treat my friends to some nachos if it means company to watch the Huskies. The NCAA College Basketball Season was so suddenly aborted after the best year of competition EVER. I don't think it quite hit me until all the replays from previous championships started popping up on social media and I realized how much sports can bring people together, how many years of my life I've spent watching basketball games, and how serious this pandemic really is.  You'd think being told to wear goggles, masks, and gloves to treat my few remaining patients would have been sufficient. If you've never worn them - those things are hot, sticky, and make your glasses fog up! 

So now that I've rambled on, I guess I should find some sort of purpose for taking your time.  All I can come up with is gratitude. On Wednesday, March 18th, I went into my clinic to call my patients and cancel their scheduled appointments. That was sad, but a few days later, I started to really miss what I do. I have fortunately had a few days in the office to treat high priority patients and each time I've seen a patient, I've felt life being restored to my body, air returning back to my lungs, energy surging, and the return of my dimply smile.  Endless gratitude reflecting on how my career has unfolded to this point where I have the world's best coworkers all collectively waiting to restore our previous routines.

I'm grateful for the small businesses in my local community who have been able to transition their usual operations to help support everyone at this time.  I've enjoyed some really good take-out meals in the past 18 days at home and highly recommend supporting your small local businesses that are trying to survive.  I'm grateful for all the people on the front lines - healthcare workers, front desk workers, environmental services cleaning crews, demand flow services, and leadership - in my office and throughout the country and the world who are taking care of so many sick people.  I'm grateful for books, the fact that I had too many out from the library when this all started that I'm slowly working my way through, and also audiobook downloads available from the library, and Netflix and Amazon having rentals to watch movies.

I'm grateful for all the different electronic user interfaces that have made it possible for me to have face-to-face conversations with so many people.  Between FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, Skype, WebEx, Zoom, Google Hangouts, and HouseParty - it really isn't hard to connect, but those virtual gatherings don't quite feel the same. There were a few days last week where I bounced from call to call catching up with old friends, seeing how family members are doing, and trying to find that missing sense of connection.  Today my extended family gathered on Zoom in preparation for Passover to begin on Wednesday.  Check that out! People in 20 different homes in at least 10 different states ranging between Washington, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma, California, and Washington, D.C.

I'm worried for my friends who are working to save lives.  They have families and kids of their own and are at extremely high risk. I wish I could do more to help them, to help sick people, I guess just to help anybody. The most any of us can really do right now is to stay at home and prevent further spread of the virus. I'm very hopeful that when this all ends, there will be improvements made to how we operate as a country and as a healthcare system.  Let's hope this wraps up in time for everyone to enjoy summer.  Let's hope this doesn't destroy families financially, or in any other ways.  Let's hope we can resume travel soon.  Let's hope everyone stays healthy and safe.  And let's hope we can have a massive celebration together on the other side. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you out.  We're all in this together.