A Year in Quarantine
A Year In Quarantine
It’s been a year since the world shut down. A year since we received an email from our daughters’ school that said the next day (March 13) would be the last one in person. For now.
We thought the quarantine would last optimistically two weeks—or pessimistically, at most, 7-8 weeks like the lockdown that occurred in China. It was doable. Unprecedented but doable.
At the time I started a ‘quarantine’ journal that I debated posting here on the blog. I didn’t. Why? There were too many unknowns. In early April, my usual springtime asthma exacerbation hit. Was it covid? Did I have an unknown exposure? I stayed home due to my cough. I didn’t have covid.
Work was SLOW. That’s right—during a pandemic, things slowed down a LOT for our office. The reason was the shutdown, and, we would later discover, the fact that children didn’t seem to be the huge vector for spreading Sars-CoV-2 like they are for influenza or RSV.
This year in quarantine has changed all of us in big and little ways. I’m more appreciative of every little thing. And I’m more aware of the resilience of my children. The desperateness of humanity. And the need, even for homebodies, for socialization.
And I can tell that it’s been a year. Mini Me is finally going back in person (hybrid) this week. And though she’s been fairly resilient, the past month or so has been harder. It’s been harder for a lot of our kids and it shows. The last several weeks I’ve seen more patients with a sliding scale of mental breakdowns and parents who are desperate to help their kids. I won’t go into details but when they say that our kids need to go back to school, I agree.
Our world is not the same place it was a year ago, or a year and a month ago. It won’t be the same again. We won’t take a lovely walk or vacation or hug from a friend for granted ever again.
And in this unwanted ‘anniversary’ for official pandemic in the United States, what I wish for the most is more patience and graciousness. Last June was a time of reckoning in social justice and the events that happened still weigh in on me. And the recent events in Atlanta pour more into the racism and systemic racism that thrives in this country. It’s too hard for me to verbalize it here because it’s beyond me. But I’ve been reading and learning and I know that my tender heart absorbs it all, just as it absorbs what is going on with each of my patients.
I am here for you.
