My eighty-six-year-old mother lives in the Hudson Valley in New York, over 1,200 miles away from us. As everyone knows by now, her state is the worst hit by the coronavirus in the United States. Andrew Cuomo, their governor, is doing the best he can despite the federal government's inaction and over antipathy toward him, but it's clear New York is going to be impacted for a long time to come.
My sister lives in the same town where my mother is and she has some siblings, grandsons, and a few nieces and nephews in fairly close proximity. Still, I worry a lot about her because she lives alone in the house I grew up and she has a number of underlying conditions (including pulmonary fibrosis, an interstitial lung disease), making her quite vulnerable to the impact this novel virus could inflict on her if she were to get it.
As a matter of managing all her health issues, her calendar is filled with doctors' visits: such as a cardiologist, a neurologist, a pulmonologist, a vascular specialist, not to mention her primary care physician and dentist (she has teeth issues, too). Needless to say, her staying home from her regular appointments is worrisome enough.
I speak to her every day. Yesterday, she told me she fell walking back in the house from getting the newspaper from the delivery box out on the street. She fell on her side, bruising her ribs, but thankfully, she was able to get herself up and back in the house.
While it doesn't sound like she broke anything, the thought that she could've fallen unconscious on the front stoop is scary as hell. But then even if she decided she needed to go to the ER or urgent care (or someone who found her), would she be safe going and exposing herself to the virus with sick people in the waiting room? And then there's the decision as to whether to impose on already strained emergency services...what's the right thing to do?
In the end, she chose not to call for an ambulance and based on what she told me, I agreed with her. But if something really terrible happened and she had no choice, what could she do?
Scary thoughts.
Yours in bubble wrap,
Michael
My sister lives in the same town where my mother is and she has some siblings, grandsons, and a few nieces and nephews in fairly close proximity. Still, I worry a lot about her because she lives alone in the house I grew up and she has a number of underlying conditions (including pulmonary fibrosis, an interstitial lung disease), making her quite vulnerable to the impact this novel virus could inflict on her if she were to get it.
As a matter of managing all her health issues, her calendar is filled with doctors' visits: such as a cardiologist, a neurologist, a pulmonologist, a vascular specialist, not to mention her primary care physician and dentist (she has teeth issues, too). Needless to say, her staying home from her regular appointments is worrisome enough.
I speak to her every day. Yesterday, she told me she fell walking back in the house from getting the newspaper from the delivery box out on the street. She fell on her side, bruising her ribs, but thankfully, she was able to get herself up and back in the house.
While it doesn't sound like she broke anything, the thought that she could've fallen unconscious on the front stoop is scary as hell. But then even if she decided she needed to go to the ER or urgent care (or someone who found her), would she be safe going and exposing herself to the virus with sick people in the waiting room? And then there's the decision as to whether to impose on already strained emergency services...what's the right thing to do?
In the end, she chose not to call for an ambulance and based on what she told me, I agreed with her. But if something really terrible happened and she had no choice, what could she do?
Scary thoughts.
Yours in bubble wrap,
Michael
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