Dear Diary,
Today I watched this, and felt a little better. That doctor does a good job of defining boundaries around what the coronavirus is and is not, and gives very explicit instructions about how to keep yourself and your family safe–and those instructions involve no level of magical thinking. They also more or less kill my Chernobyl fears…
Yesterday our younger one turned 16–it felt like ‘wartime 16’ since I don’t have access to my usual stock of birthday related stuff; usually there’s a frantic run to the CVS or the mall to collect a bunch of little things to wrap; there’s a big sign, made new each year (this year it was made with newspaper, as I have no wrapping paper)…there’s food made in the birthday girl’s honor (this year it’s based on what’s in the pantry..whose excited for rice or cereal?)…there is a trip to the beach? (now backyard) and nice coffee? (no substitute available) And some kind of activity with friends? (virtual) Maybe a trip to the city? (see backyard) 16 in Quarantine will definitely be remembered…as a departure; BUT, on this day much love was shared with her in all the many ways we can digitally reach out, and I was grateful for it.
Birthday aside, it continues to bum me out that everyone is getting a big slice of medical uncertainty these days; unquestionably more than they ordered. That event is known as “a Tuesday” in the lives of those with autoimmune conditions. I’ve had parodititis….9,000 times at this point. It usually arrives with a bang: one of the salivary glands in my face gets super hard and swollen. It’s painful, comes on quickly, and subsides slowly. It happens when the salivary gland gets angry, after a cold, or just because. It’s hard to eat or sleep when the salivary gland throws a tantrum, but it is a reminder of the limits of my control–I don’t even control many of things going on in my own body. A fact that’s often useful to remember as we are all hunkered down–this uncertainty is always present, just not always so visible….
Until tomorrow