Dear Diary,
Things have shifted quickly over the last two and a half weeks.
Economies are opening in various states (not mine), despite increasing case numbers. These numbers make sense when you see any of the circulating pictures of bars and beaches refilling with people from Florida to Wisconsin. Heavily armed dudes are protesting the lockdown on the steps of the statehouse in Michigan. (Is that what the second amendment protects? armed protest?)
In the same way that you can’t assault someone because you really want to, you shouldn’t be allowed to flout public health rules to infect someone because you really want to go out. This feels less like an issue of civil liberties and more of common decency. Has the lockdown grown tiresome for all of us? Undoubtedly. Has our physical risk of contracting the virus and all of its attendant problems fundamentally changed? Not obviously. As was our status on the way into the lockdown, we still have no antiviral on the near horizon, no obvious dramatic increase in testing or tracing.
The virus is pressing on me personally, in that it’s keeping me from the east coast, where my parents are struggling.
My father, whose been suffering with Parkinson’s for the last three years, continues his slide into oblivion–now advancing at a shocking pace. I saw him in December. He was getting around, albeit slowly, and mentally he was in and out. He could participate in conversation, but he got confused. He could, more or less, tend to his needs–eating and talking, etc.
I saw him again at the end of February and he’d lost some ability. He was spending more time out than in. Confusion was more of a constant. Sometimes he could string together a thought that made sense, but more of the time was spent trying to decode the words he used to construct some kind of meaning from his effort to communicate. He could feed himself, and walk around, and ask for things. I wonder if he was at the edge of his ability to connect to the world around him in a meaningful way.
Two weeks into March he was moved to assisted living. Three and a half weeks into March he was pulled out of AL given the Covid risk. Here we are, one leg into May, and he’s back in a different assisted living arrangement and now under the care of hospice. It felt like he was slowly being taken from his family, bit by bit as more abilities were slowly eroded, and then, in the space of three months, he went from struggly to the absolute brink.
He never loved the phone, even when he was fully in command of himself. Now it’s hard to connect via technology because his attention is wandery at best and he’s mostly lost the ability to articulate any of his thoughts. I can’t travel to see him for fear that I’ll contract the virus on a plane and give it to him…
If I had any control over anything at all, I’d be with him now….
In the meantime, I find my solace where I can. Numerous news outlets report that scientific teams from all around the world are working together to identify the proteins that make up the spike of the corona virus. Said proteins are used by the virus to gain entry into the host cell to replicate. The goal is to find an antiviral that will successfully attach itself to one of these proteins and thwart the virus’ ability to reproduce itself. I find the many articles about this process wildly inspiring and have fingers firmly crossed for success in any quarter.
Until tomorrow