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Apr 5, 2020 01:31AM
- edited
Apr 5, 2020 01:42AM
by
ChiSandy
Bob just came home (midnight)--suddenly his days are longer because of mask/gown/glove procedures. (He gets one N95 per hospital, and is expected to reuse it till it falls apart. He doesn't get a paper cap either). My heart sank when he told me he was at Little Company of Mary, where he saw 22 patients--15 of whom have COVID-19. He was not in the ICU, and he stayed 6' from their beds, but still...none of his colleagues (all a decade younger--he is 70, smokes 1/4-1/2 pack a day and drinks a lot at night) are going there. The rival cardiology group on the SW Side has forbidden its doctors to see any but strictly cardiology patients--and not at all at Little Company (where those two Evergreen Park Wal-Mart workers died). Advocate Christ now has two COVID-only floors. At least he gets an N95: the only masks the nurses get are the simple surgical ones.
Yet he won't spray his clothes down at the hospital, won't leave his coat in the car, and won't take his shoes off inside the door. He promises he will go upstairs to strip & shower. I'm now terrified to do laundry (I will now have to wear gloves)--we don't have a separate hamper or laundry basket. Do I order him to sleep in a separate room now? He likes the TV in our bedroom--but all my clothes are in there (and I have four times as much as he does). He also likes the den TV and is willing to sleep on the sofa there--but that's also where the closet is where we keep all our paper goods. His knees can't handle the climb up to & down from the attic bedroom & bath--and there's only an antenna TV in there. And where will he eat?
It's getting real. He has multiple risk factors, made worse by his refusing to retire, lest his staff & partner lose their insurance. There's a possibility I could lose him before our next anniversary in June. Do I insist that from now on he sleep at a hotel--knowing that if he gets symptoms I may never see him again?
You know, as a doctor's wife I long ago resigned myself to having my family take a back seat to his patients--and by his taking on more call from his colleagues, giving priority to them too. But it was only at the price of our emotional well being. Now he's putting his colleagues and staff ahead of OUR LIVES. He never signed on for this when he decided to go to medical school. No doctor in America (except epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists who go into Third World hot zones) does.
And now I could die sooner too. What's the point of having beaten cancer?
Diagnosed at 64 on routine annual mammo, no lump. OncotypeDX 16. I cried because I had no shoes...but then again, I won’t get blisters....
Dx
9/9/2015, IDC, Right, 1cm, Stage IA, Grade 2, 0/4 nodes, ER+/PR+, HER2- (IHC)
Surgery
9/23/2015 Lumpectomy: Right
Radiation Therapy
11/2/2015 3DCRT: Breast
Hormonal Therapy
12/31/2015 Femara (letrozole)