WELL. My state’s “safe opening” did not seem to have gone as planned and we are seeing more COVID-19 in the community than ever. There was a tripling of cases over the past ~2 weeks, with 3.3K cases recorded on 6/18.
On a clinical level at work, I am seeing more of it as well. $*&@#.
I am feeling: behind at work; overwhelmed at the prospect of another surge; tired of revamping things and changing policies seemingly every second. It is what it is though. I am also maintaining perspective & some gratitude.
Grateful for:
- my family’s health thus far, both immediate & extended
- our household not getting sick with COVID-19 (yet; I do feel it is sort of inevitable now that cases are rising so much & Josh and I having to see patients at work.)
- fun diversions like playing with different planners/paper/etc. YES this bizarre hobby keeps me sane.
- my residents who continue to (overall) take things in stride and not complain about ever-changing rules and expectations. (Our third class starts in July and now I will have 24, our final number. yeah!)
- things like Webex & Zoom. WHAT would we do without them? I guess just a lot of conference calls but that would be even more terrible.
- G’s naps (seriously) and relatively decent sleeping habits
- streaming movies & music that allow you to watch/listen to almost ANYTHING whenever. Seriously, just think about that. It is miraculous.
- BOOKS
- That it’s takeout night! We are getting Cuban. The kids are already very on board (they love beans & rice as well as plantains).
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Since I’ve been reading here daily–I was thinking of your increased exposure when news of FL’s record highs broke. I hope you all continue to stay well. Happy to talk about isolating and quarantining in the household if you need. But… my big news is that I persuaded our 21-year-old who has been meandering through college and organizing work about the beauty of paper planners and he may come here for inspiration too. He ordered himself some Moleskines in the interim. Be safe SHU family.
I WISH I had discovered bullet journaling and really detailed planning at 21!!!
Keep focusing on the gratitude! I’m so big into this and it’s become a major focus of my life. The more I practice it, the more I just naturally seem to find it everywhere. It’s always a work in progress, but I more naturally find myself re-framing situations without thinking about it as much anymore. Despite it all, you DO have a lot to be grateful for- that’s a great list you shared! It’s fine to vent and complain, we all do and it can feel good to get things off our chest….just also keep taking that time out to bring it back to gratitude too, as you did here today! 🙂
<3 thanks Kae! Clearly you are a great example of gratitude - given your name & blog name :) Very true. So much more to be grateful for than complain about even in tough times.
Hi Sarah! Houston, TX resident and we are seeing a similar trend here. I work in a non-clinical healthcare role so have been remote since Mid-March. After finding a loophole (since our governor, while promoting mask wearing, doesn’t believe it can be “mandated”…SMH), the big cities in the state have now imposed a fine for businesses that don’t enforce mask wearing and social distancing. I think that will help, but that in the near term, we’ll have some type of stay-at-home order again. Not sure how that will happen with the state vs. local political issues (red vs. blue respectively…how this has become a political issue, just UGH) is to be seen. We just sent my son back to daycare a few weeks back, and it’s been a game changer for mental health/productivity for all of us, but now I know we’ll likely have to bring him home sometime in the next month. Thinking of you and your family – stay safe and be well. Thank you for all you and your husband do to take care of folks!
Just wondering if you did any particular sleep coaching / approach to get G to be such an epic napper? Would be amazing if I could get my little one on a similar routine. Thank you.
Wondering the same too! My 2nd son gave up naps around age 2 (he’s going to be 3 in sept), and it is rough! He also has issues with sleeping through the night, which are worse! My older son had no issues sleeping through the night or napping, and I’m doing the same methods for both, so I’m at a loss of what to do!
I’m not Sarah (obviously) but I can share what helped us – a sleep coach! I bought an online sleep course with my second kiddo, mostly because my first was a champion sleeper with little effort from us and I needed help with my second. There were a few online videos to watch and we implemented the plan. That was when he was 3ish months old and since then (now 15 months) he consistently sleeps 12 hours a night with a reliable 1.5-2.5 hour nap. We lay him down and walk away and it’s amazing. The person I used has courses up through 5 years I think, obviously with different techniques for different ages. For me, personally, I needed to stop reading multiple methods and decide to trust the one we went with – so I followed her advice exactly and stopped looking up other things to do. Her reviews are fantastic from parents of kids of all ages. Maybe something to consider? Best of luck – sleep is so hard but so important for both parents and kids!!!
(copying what I wrote to Nina above!): We didn’t do anything to help with naps. We did let her cry a few nights when she was ~18 months old and still trying to breastfeed multiple times overnight (I was really no longer able to handle it and it worked very quickly). I honestly think her naps are solid because she stays up fairly late (until 9-9:30p with the big kids) and we try to make mornings the most active time of day (outside).
We didn’t do anything to help with naps. We did let her cry a few nights when she was ~18 months old and still trying to breastfeed multiple times overnight (I was really no longer able to handle it and it worked very quickly). I honestly think her naps are solid because she stays up fairly late (until 9-9:30p with the big kids) and we try to make mornings the most active time of day (outside).
Thanks for sharing. Glad it’s not been too much hard work to get her napping well. Really appreciate your daily blogs at the moment.
similar situation here in the Philippines. after shifting to a more relax lockdown, cases have doubled, which is very scary and put the government in dilemma what to do next. people has lockdown fatigue and many are losing income, so it’s really about living vs livelihood. as someone working in health: what do you think the gov should be when they see this pattern (outbreak after lockdown)?
I don’t think I have the level of expertise needed to answer that but I think a high rate of rise should be a red flag …
Tremendous appreciation of your daily posts. You make a BIG help with issues of shut in.
Curious: as a doctor did you have any other expectation than what has unfolded when state went ahead with opening up without meeting guidelines? Has the case increase been slower than you expected? Please do not respond to this at all if the question is awkward, I do not intent it as such. I am NOT doctor or medical but increases seemed predictable to me and actually slower in impact than I expected.
I am definitely not an ID or epidemiology expert. I guess I thought that cases might rise slowly or stay steady because of masks and precautions reducing the R0 (infectivity rate). But the recent rise has not been slow it has been rapid.
Do remember when they were talking about doubling time for cases being about three days when on the exponential part of the growth curve? Here’s hoping you don’t have 7000 new cases on Monday. 😔
Are you seeing any Covid patients? I read that Type 1 diabetes sometimes manifests for the first time when there is a viral infection.
I can’t speak to that exactly (patient privacy) but I will say that no, we have not had a new onset diabetes patient show up with covid yet. There is usually a lag time (can be months) between infection and showing diabetes symptoms. We don’t yet know whether covid will increase rates.
Sarah … couldn’t this increase in cases be simply due to the fact that more people have the ability to get tested? Also, do you really think that keeping the country in a state of shutdown will do any good? I just feel like we have to learn to “live” with the virus until a treatment or vaccine can be found. Yes, it is sad that the numbers are rapidly increasing but the number of deaths definitely are jumping that dramatically (it seems). For example in Minnesota where I live as of a week ago there were only 250 people that had died from COVID that weren’t in a long term care facility. Do you think that closing the economy again would help?
No, i don’t think testing has changed significantly in the past week since cases tripled.
I am not advocating permanent shutdown but rises like this to me look like an NYC situation coming up where there will be piles of people in EDS and not enough caregivers or beds. There’s “shutdown” and there’s blatant disregard, like throwing parties and NOT wearing masks in public spaces and going on tourist trips. I think we need to find some more moderate ground.