adrian_turtle

It has been a terrible week. I went to London for the first time. I saw my mother-in-law for the last time. I discovered how much of modern life depends on having my cell phone. I hope to post more about all that, but I am demonstrably not very good at following through on "I'll post about that later."

One afternoon, Cattitude and I went out in search of a cell phone. We left Redbird in the hospital room where her mom lay gasping for breath, too weak to sit up by herself. It would have been better for one of us to stay with Redbird, but none of us trusted my ability to find the store and find my way back to the hospital, especially with no map or way to call an Uber.

Cattitude has long legs. For decades, he has walked behind our hobbit, moderating his pace. It unsettles him that I need him to walk in front, because I have no sense of direction (and can't read a map and a street sign with the same glasses.) And I want the option of hiding behind him in case of strobes. Anyway, he worries about outpacing me or otherwise leaving me behind. So I said, "Turtle here. Not lost yet."
And a block later, "Turtle here. Not lost yet." Good to know.
And later on, "Turtle here. Not lost yet."

We found a place to buy a phone and found our way back to Redbird and her mom. We all talked about how much we loved one another. Now she's gone. We came home so Vicki could do the rest of sitting shiva not in London.

Turtle here. Not lost yet.

We may be rushing off to London. Vicki's mom said she was starting to feel her age, which is 94, so we were thinking maybe we would go visit her this summer, or maybe fall. But then she fell ill and we are looking to travel much sooner. It brought home that feeling of needing to leave with no time for your bread to rise. It's not literally that urgent. There will be time for laundry to finish drying, time to call the catsitter. Still nerve-wracking

This is not a good time for international travel. We have passports, and we all just applied for the new Electronic Travel Authorization the UK started requiring for visitors from the US. But the...the lawlessness at the border, makes it all feel frightening and out of control. Advice? Lawyer recommendations? We don't have anyone on retainer, or even anyone to call if something were to go wrong.

I just got email from my friendly neighborhood hospital network. They've been monitoring the local levels of contagious viral illness, and found they are decreasing. (Happy spring! Yay!) They have reached a low enough level that "employees are no longer required to wear masks during direct interactions with patients," though they will continue to monitor conditions.

If a patient wants a clinician to wear a mask, feel free to ask. Remember they don't have to if they don't want to.

If patients or visitors want to wear other masks or respirators, they are required to wear surgical masks on top of them in order to impair the fit. Layering masks only causes the underlying N95 to leak 13% of the time, so it's not a reliable way to cause leakage. It's just so annoying, because the hospital is not requiring everybody in the room to mask. You can walk around unmasked, wearing a surgical mask, or wearing a surgical mask over an N95. It's only the safest option, the N95 alone, that is forbidden. I don't expect the new rule to be enforced, but it still distresses me.
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/study-wearing-surgical-masks-over-n95s-can-cause-dangerous-leaks

I have carefully avoided eating in restaurants for more than 5 years now. I remember the last time I casually got a cup of tea and a macaroon in the library cafe (in early March of 2020. That was the trip where I checked out a doorstopper of a short story collection that sat on my headboard shelf for 10 months.) After the 3 of us were vaccinated in 2021, we went out for lunch, rejoicing. We didn't know how little help the vaccine was on somebody immunocompromised, nor how little it helped with the new variants. That was probably when Vicki got Covid. And pneumonia. And she's coughing yet.

For a long time, I've heard some people saying Covid has been thoroughly suppressed already and we can go back to doing what we like. The economy needs it, or everyone is exhausted, or it just isn't necessary to be cautious anymore. And I hear others say common courtesy requires stringent precautions: masking everywhere, not eating in restaurants, etc. Brunch? You would risk everyone's health for something as trivial as brunch? Yes, I am taking stringent precautions, but it's a loss. And it has been a real loss that I have not been able to have a festive meal in company. That I have not been able to invite someone over for dinner. That I have not been able to stop off for a sandwich as part of a long day of errands. It's not trivial. (footnote) I've missed it.

I spent most of last week at a shiva out of state, eating meals at restaurants. Cousins very kindly drove me everywhere, as I can't drive. There are restaurants that one or another of my relatives really like, so all eleven of us went together. Sitting under flickering lights, in a large group that contained Cousin Shouty, it did not seem feasible to keep my mask on OR ask detailed questions of waiters before each meal. Are the eggs cooked in butter? Is there beer in the fried mushrooms? I took a lot of LactAid, but it wasn't for dairy foods that I enjoyed. I ate in restaurants without masking, but they weren't foods that I enjoyed, and they weren't experiences that I enjoyed.

So now I am wearing a mask at home. To protect Vicki, in case I caught something from all that unmasked running around Ohio and eating in restaurants.



(footnote) I do eat outdoors in company in good weather, but I live in Boston and good weather for outdoor dining is not predictable, and just doesn't happen for much of the year. Especially for those of us who can't tolerate serious heat and don't have our own comfy backyards.

I'm about to head to a "Stop the Coup" rally on the Boston Common. I hope it will be too crowded to find anyone except the 2 people I am planning to meet, but please join me. (Then again, it's a weekday and everyone is tired and there might be few enough that a couple more people standing there would be really noticeable!)

I found a piece of cardboard to make a sign, despite Redbird's recent valiant efforts to tidy up the living room. All I could think of was, "NO!" It has the virtue of fitting on the sign, but does not seem adequate in other ways. There's just so much to protest. Flail.

I made a doctor's appointment yesterday, and the person in the office asked me a question I didn't expect. (No, I still haven't found a primary care doctor. Still looking.) I found a neurologist connected with MGH who seemed vaguely promising, so I called the neurology clinic desk at MGH. The nice person there arranged for me to have the next-available appointment with a neurologist she thinks might be able to help. I'll let you know in 10 months how it goes.

The person in the neurology clinic really was very helpful in setting up the appointment, and asked all the usual questions about name and address and insurance and emergency contacts and so forth. They had a more extensive form than I expected, either because it's 2025 or because it's such a big hospital.
Some of the questions are recognizably sensible even if I'm not accustomed to them. Am I looking for a second opinion? Am I being treated for this problem currently? Have I been hospitalized overnight in the last 4 weeks? Do I plan to arrive by ambulance?
Then they asked "In what state were you born?" This is not relevant to my health nor to my health insurance. This is not part of my medical records at all! It's on my passport, which I've never needed to show a health care provider or insurance company.

A neurologist once asked me if I'd been born by C-section, but I don't recall him asking where. I suppose it might be relevant to a person's brain chemistry if they had spent early childhood in some spectacularly polluted area. But that's a confluence of place and time, and the place is usually more specific than the whole state. I was born in Michigan, but I left long before the notorious water pollution of Flint. I was even out of state the year half the milk was contaminated.

I vaguely recall hearing that in some states (Texas? Someplace else down south?) there were new rules last year requiring hospitals to ask patients their citizenship status. Could this be that sort of thing? It hardly seems plausible. If Boston's major hospitals closed their doors to everyone who had been born abroad, all the places would collapse.

(See previous rock)

I am narrowing things down without feeling any better about the problem of finding a primary care doctor, a neurologist, and a hospital that are all in my new insurance network. My insurance covers some of the buildings at MGH but not all. There are doctors in the insurance network who sometimes list their address as the main MGH address next door. (Why not? I'm sure they have one mailroom for the whole facility.) But they have their actual office in the Epilepsy Center in the building that's out of network. Any procedure I might have at the Epilepsy Center would not be covered by the insurance. Or the Primary Care Center. Or the Allergy and Immunology Center. Oh, why did I even bother staying up last night looking through lists of doctors.

I have a question about vibes. Imagine curling up on the couch with hot drinks, reading to one another while literal and metaphorical blizzards howled outside. Do you think it better to read a wintry book like The Wolves of Willoughby Chase or The Dark Is Rising or a summery book like Gone-Away Lake?

This morning, I was running a small errand at the doctor's office. It was just an errand, I'm not sick, so of course I waited while they dealt with other people. A family having a Bad Day came into the waiting room from the doctor side. The mom was carrying a child of maybe 8. They were the size of big kid you don't carry unless something is wrong, and it's a long way down the hall to the elevator. There was a little kid (2 or 3) trailing along behind looking worried.

I stood up and offered to get the door to the hallway for her, because she had her hands full. She said, "Oh no! Thank you, but I don't want you to get sick. I can get it." I was wearing an N95 face mask. She and her sick kid weren't. I want to appreciate her kind thought, her desire to protect a stranger. I just wish we lived in a world where such kindness was more usefully expressed.

Flashing Christmas lights are migraine triggers for me, and they are so very common. I just realized that there aren't any Christmas lights in this neighborhood. None. It's nice living here. Ok, it's not always visually peaceful. (Last year I didn't notice if there were Christmas lights, because there were so many flashing lights around trolley and road repairs.) But this year is wonderfully peaceful. Strangers on the street have wished me "Happy Holidays," quite a few times, and "Happy New Year" (twice, already!) and once "Gut Yontif."