About 20 miles from where I’m typing, there’s a sad crisis: a nursing home is the epicenter of COVID-19 deaths in our state. As reported in the Seattle Times , and county government sources, so far most of the deaths in our state were residents there, in their 70s, 80s and 90s. [click on the highlighted words for more info]
But a local young ER doctor tested positive and is in critical care, and only ten minutes away, a student at a local college had a positive test. At this time (Mar 16) we have more deaths than anywhere else in the US, and more than the UK or Japan. Our whole state is in a bit of a lockdown, and the daily reports are still showing more cases.
The medical journal Lancet had an article a few days ago with some details of the deaths in Italy. Of the first 827 deaths, the average age was 81 (!) with 56% of deaths age 80+. Male to female ratio of deaths was 4 to 1. They list diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, cancer and smoking as risk factors.
So what’s the “good ” news? Well, outside of our county (the most populated in the state), there are very few deaths so far. Local media doctors are saying that in the young, the disease tends to be mild. They’ve now done over 10,000 tests here (one still basically needs to have some symptoms to qualify for a test), and fewer than 8% are positive, meaning 92% are negative.
The supermarkets are open, and some have run out of toilet paper, but OldGuy is grateful this is not a DIARRHEA pandemic! We must have weird food preferences, because they haven’t run out of stuff we usually eat.
Our home caregivers are smart people who wash their hands. We are dealing with scares for family members (exposed to folks who coughed, or subsequently developed symptoms; possible secondary exposures, complaints of sore throats, sneezes, and chest issues). With the pink and white dogwoods blooming, OldGuy spends the morning sneezing, but avoids sneezing in public. No one we know is sick.
Still, we’re in the high-risk group, as designated by the CDC. We seem to have some impressive and smart infectious disease / public health types around here, and the political leaders have taken action that may help us. We’re aware of the debates; maybe it’s OldGuy experience (or wisdom?), but we avoid getting worked up about all the chatter. Enjoying some deep meditative breathing!
OldGuy feels for those championing such active and passive prevention. If the disaster doesn’t become worse, people will complain. If the disaster does get a lot worse, people will complain. So Old Guy here will be a curmudgeon and complain about complainers.
Practical Caregiving matters: so what if OldGuyCaregiver goes down, gets sick, etc, what’s the plan? Besides the CDC guidelines about self-isolation, how will the caregiving here proceed? Not that anyone wants to be good at Contingency Planning, we have some plans in place. A lot of it is really just simple list making.
First are phone numbers and emails for our caregiving agency contacts. We currently use 32 hours a week, but that would have to ramp up. Realistically though, agencies have always had problems with staffing, and it’s unclear whether they could even send caregivers for more hours.
Then there’s a listing of particular care items (disposable “lingerie”) that seem to work best, and where to get them (it’s not ALL Amazon!) Then there are food preferences, and needing to go to three different stores to get them.
The consequence of social distancing, of course, is social isolation, now even worse for older people staying at home. CareGivingOldGuys realize we may not be the best conversing partners. There’s FaceTime, I guess.
Here’s a contingency to think about: what if the Internet gets overloaded with all the remote workers and kids at home streaming? Time to dust off real books, DVD’s and CD’s! And if the King goes down (in the chess picture above), time to just start a new game.
Our designated Healthcare Power of Atty knows where the documents are, and if it comes to that, what to do. But COVID-19 isn’t uniformly fatal even in the high risk groups, ain’t that nice? Just another opportunity to be an optimist, and notice it isn’t raining right now!
