So, I'm pretty scared right now. Anyone else?
 

Anyone want to tell me I'm not alone here?

Not that I have specific reasons to be scared.

Well, some, my wife got sick about 2 weeks ago, roughly 5 days after we started self isolating anyway. She had a dry cough and a mild fever, body aches, fatigue, flu like symptoms. At the time you had to have a 104 degree fever to get a COVID test and her fever was only ever up to 100.1 (and only that high for about 24 hours, mostly it was around 99.5) so we were told to consider her presumed COVID and stay home monitor things and have her get lots of rest and fluid. In about 5 days she felt much better. She still isn't exactly well and today shes coughing again, but it's been cold and damp and she has had a couple of days of insomnia. Things are probably ok. She's in her 30s and generally healthy and ALWAYS takes a long time to fully get over a chest cold thing. So...still. It's nerve wracking.

Me and my daughter, neither of us have been sick that we are aware of. So that's good. And this is the start of week 4 of almost total isolation for us, so if we were going to get sick, we probably would have. I work with seniors for a living and the county I live in was one of the first ones in Pennsylvania to have a serious COVID outbreak so we self isolated as soon as they shut down schools. Which brings me to the second reason I am scared, I have no idea what the hell is going to happen to us financially. We own an insurance agency that works with seniors. I am rapidly trying to learn how to do my job by phone rather than in person, tricky at best, but my whole client base is under attack by this thing AND today I started getting calls from people who want to cancel their policies because their part time jobs that they had been keeping to make ends meet are being eliminated and their insurance policies seem like extravagant extra expenses now. Never mind that this is precisely the wrong time to drop your life insurance. I get it, you have to eat. We have savings, and money coming in from work that I did before things went weird. But the future is, for the first time in a long time, totally unclear to me in terms of what is going to happen to my business.

So, financially we are in super uncertain times. But, realistically, probably ok. My wife is sick, but also, realistically probably ok. But when you are home alone with nothing but your own thoughts and reportage of the MOST horrible extreme circumstances going on in the outside world, things can start to feel terrifyingly bleak.

So...today, I'm scared. Yesterday I was pretty hopeful, tomorrow who knows? How about you all. How's the GBB holding up?

It's OK to be scared right now. It really is and what you're going through means you have good reason to be scared.

Myself, I'm less scared than filled with a lot of anxiety. It's eating at me mentally and physically screwing up my stomach.

On those rare days where it isn't rainy and grey I've been trying to take walks outside. These help a lot. Our nearby park is mostly empty so that is a positive in this very negative time. It is a bad time to try and start a new job and that is adding a lot to the anxiety. But I'm worried for my family and my friends.

I hope things can really relax by the end of this month.

I really hope your wife feels better soon. It took my BIL a long time to recover from the "flu" he had this year, we think it might have actually been COVID-19. I kind of hope it was as he is better and that should protect him. My sister had the same flu and it took her 3 weeks to feel good again. Who knows.

Meanwhile my wife's brother is a Doctor in a New Orleans Hospital. Outside of NY, NJ & Washington, that appears to be the next worst place to be in the US. So yes, anxiety.

Mostly I'm ok but sometimes I get nervous about this. Last week I saw an interview with an epidemiologist that spooked me. It was weird; I started thinking there's a good chance I'll die from this.

Ha, I haven't been anywhere but one trip to the grocery store since the 12th. And now I'm thinking of postponing my appointment for a checkup in mid-April.

My non-professional guess is that you're 100% normal feeling as you do. The bad thing would be letting all this make you lose faith in an eventual recovery or your ability to persevere. We can get through this and we will. One day at a time.

There's plenty of free floating anxiety and fear going around so don't feel like the Lone Ranger here! Personally, I've almost been more social than normal due to circumstances outside my control, like having a big chunk of ceiling cave in from a roof leak that required having it replaced, with all the attendant labor required and the trips to Home Depot and all. But we maintained social distance throughout and now I worry less about having my crapshack cave in so that's good.

I'm self employed in a home based business so personally very little has changed for me--most weeks I'd go for days at a time without ever going outside my gate aside from fetching in the mail or playing ball with the dogs on the dead end street I live on. So I'm shopping even less often than I used to--I've had a tendency to plan a couple outings a week just to keep from being a total hermit, now I don't even have to feel guilty about not doing even that much. My daughter works for Trader Joe's and lives next door--I have an Amazon Prime membership so she's been ordering stuff through my account and I get paid back in groceries since she has to be there anyway so that works out beautifully for us both. We all text each other a lot and talk on the phone rather than dropping by as we usually would.

We've all decided to assume things are gonna suck globally this summer and the almost son in law and I have been co-planning two very big gardens to augment vegetable supplies in case shit goes adrift and supply lines get really interrupted. If they don't, hey, free veggies! I have a couple orders of seeds coming from heirloom variety suppliers, all GMO, organic and free pollinated so we can save seed as needed. He has a shit ton of starts already going under a makeshift greenhouse and I'll be right behind him. Gardening is good for what ails ya, boosts the immune system and is just good for making the spirit happy too.

So yeah, the anxiety and fear are there but we're doing all we can to keep our chins up and thinking along productive and helpful lines.

This is why I decided to start this. I feel like a lot of what is amplifying the free floating fear and anxiety (I like that turn of phrase SmartAleq) is the isolation of it. I don't really want to broadcast this stuff on Facebook because, welll, facebook. I also don't want to worry my worry wart family until things are settled. I talk to friends about whats going on but there is a lot of putting brave faces on things and downplaying stuff.

Screw that. This shit is scary sometimes. Not always. Just sometimes. It's helpful to not feel like I'm in that alone.

I'm sorry for your wife's brother What Exit? That has to be an unimaginable situation. One of my wife's friends from college is married to a pulmonologist in the Boulder Colorado area who is making it sound like a war zone out there. I can only imagine how much worse New Orleans or New York is. People like that are freaking heroes.

That puts you in an exclusive club of about seven billion scared motherfuckers.

One of my oldest and closest friends is a respiratory therapist who's right there on the front lines--and he's married to an RN who works at OHSU, one of the biggest hospitals in the state. I'm super worried for them both and it's rough hearing about what they're going through and this isn't even close to being the worst hit state in the US (although the RT actually works in a WA hospital so he's a bit more in the mix than many other Oregonians) but I just cringe when he talks about having to wear ONE mask all day long as he's working directly with infected people--but they still have to help the uninfected too, without any sort of proper equipment to safeguard themselves and their patients. It's madness!

A big part of the reason why everyone's so scared is that pervasive feeling that nobody's actually in charge--that up in the cockpit there's a cranky toddler mashing buttons and randomly fucking with stuff and that's not a recipe for those of us back in Economy to feel safe. Nothing any of us can do about that, unfortunately, but I'm very much hoping for a little bitty wave of infection to impact the WH directly, that would be justice.

I had to make a totally unnecessary trip to town today. And it had me stressed right out. Then when I got back they had closed my exclusive camp ground.

Damn, are there any other camp grounds or places you can go? What did they do, see you leave and lock the gates?

Yus. Most of us have never been directly affected by an epidemic. There is a constant drumbeat of danger. Fear, worry, sadness, general malaise of all types is common now. It's a case of doing the best we can without being able to control the outcome. That's essentially life, but we can forget.

I do not want to be a vector, I fear for small businesses, feel the homeless must be in and causing trouble. I worry for my mom, my friends, the people who are still working in public, our hospitals. I want to take action, but . . . not sure I will be allowed. Or should. Mom shouldn't have to be frightened for me.

I make a great effort to redirect my thoughts away from the scary, which is likely the thing for which I am most prepared.

I hope your wife, clearly recovering, has some great antibodies and hands them all around.

No there were workers there when I left. They were bolting the bathroom doors shut. So now I'm a couple of miles down the road. I've got a better parking spot. And a stronger 4G signal. Just gotta shit in a hole now.

I've got about three weeks water now. So in a couple of weeks I'll go restock and move up into the mountains. Unless it gets hot sooner than that.

right? every little headache or sniffle and I'm thinking this is it, Covid19 is happening!

I don't think I've spoken with anyone who isn't scared.

I hope your wife continues to recover.

seriously, when healthcare providers in a US city are doing this we are officially a third world country. but "healthcare" just HAS to be "for profit" right? that's what we are stuck with. :raeg:

and it's bound to keep getting worse for awhile, anyway. :ohdear:

I waffle many times a day between "I got this, we got this, and it's going to suck but ultimately be okay" and "holy fuck this is running everything and endangering everyone I love."

Things that help:
Allowing my feelings to be what they are - yesterday sucked me into a black pit of bleh and I got nearly nothing done. Today was better. Tomorrow will be whatever tomorrow is.
Exercise - here's a plug reddit's Bodyweight Fitness Recommended Routine
Sticking as much as possible to a routine, even if it's a new routine
Avoiding the news and looking for positive stories, like the preliminary reports that we might actually be flattening the curve
Small indulgences - an extra cookie, minor online yarn shopping, take out once a week supporting a local restaurant
Connecting - chatting with distant coworkers*, talking with the girls, having a glass of wine with Husband in the evening, checking in with Mom
Safely getting out of the house now and then - it was beautiful out Sunday, so Eldest and I went driving. Last weekend we took a socially-distanced walk in the park.

I really like and highly recommend this article.


*Someone in the Netherlands on our corporate Yammer group offered to chat with anyone who is quarantined alone. He said he was at home with his wife and daughter, but had a long, cathartic talk with a colleague who was at home by herself and was available for anyone else looking for similar connection. I thought that was really sweet.

I do think the news and other constant scary makes it worse. It's not like there's more we watching the news can do.

Right there with you. I ding between feeling okay and even finding small joys, to suddenly looking down and feeling like Wiley Coyote when he obliviously walks off a cliff... Sometimes the thought of what is happening leaves me breathless and not in a good way. Other times it feels surreal. Mostly I feel physically stronger and better than I have in at least 6 years due to no killer commute and a lighter work load.

That said, I do worry about being furloughed. I just bought a house. I still co-own the old house (going on the market May 1). I'm terrified it won't sell (we're okay if it stays on the market for 9 months). After the house sale, the divorce. Then I'm free to be me, but will there be any me left to be? All I can think is that somehow, some way, this will all work out. Quoting Miles Patrick Overton to myself quite a bit these days...

Breathe. I think we're going to come out of this a very different people (at least I hope so). I think some norms are gone forever, and I hope some better ones, some more compassionate, kinder, ones take hold. I hope...

I'm with you. I think we've reached the point where it's being over-reported. Report essential information, of course, but give the day-to-day handwringing a rest. (One problem, of course, is that there isn't a heck of a lot else going on these days to report on.)


I can honestly say I am not scared of the current situation. To be sure, I have some concerns about others, but they are neither excessive nor obsessive.

It is all a matter of how you look at the situation. Sure, this thing is deadly. But even if I get C-19, there is at least a 95% chance I will survive it. And, of course, there is no guarantee that I will even contract it. (Alas, no data exists to estimate those odds.) All told, my chances of dying from this virus are less than the chances of someone my age dying from something this year.

The only people I'm really worried about losing is you guys. Not even myself really. I've been on borrowed time for six years. Like Moose said I got a better than 95% of sailing right through this. I hope I do because since I looked death in the face six years ago. I've gained an objectivity that renders the slow motion train wreck society has been on almost amusing. Almost.

I really think the uncertainty of it all is the worst. If we'd been told to close the hatches and hunker down till May 15th, we'd grudgingly do that and make plans.

Not knowing is a little like waiting to find out if THAT lump is benign or... As someone who's been there, finding out made it easier, albeit still scary. From that point, there is a plan, a schedule, a direct course of action. No "ifs, whens or buts" - just carry on and keep calm.

It's exactly like waiting on a diagnosis. Only instead of one person be sick. It's the whole human race. It may infect nearly everyone then die out because everyone left is immune. It may confer no immunity at all. Nobody knows yet. Not even the Chinese. They spent the first two months trying so hard to cover it up. We may never know the details of how and where it started. Or what it's true R₀ is except maybe from South Korea. Well never know the extent or path of the contagion here because Trump though it better the stock market stayed strong until all the Republican Senators could get their trades in before the realization hit the markets.

That's pretty much how I look at it, too. If I get sick enough to need mechanical ventilation I'll pass on it and just...pass on. I mean, if it's a choice between me and someone younger with kids, that's a no-brainer. There are worse things in life than death.

But I'd be angry as hell if I lost a vent to some selfish asshole that was out on the beaches for spring break, spreading cooties to people who are trying to stay healthy.

Hi NAF!

I try not to think about how scary this is, because if I did I'd be curled up in a ball whimpering, and not typing this.

I have three reasons for being at risk if I contract COVID-19. One of them means i have to leave the house three times per week to have needles stuck in my arm.

Bad pun alert

This is so I can have blood sucked out of me. The time they do this to me is called the Twilight shift ...

So yeah, there are reasons to be cheerful.

Over here, of course, we have a PM, the Secretary of State for Health and a junior health minister all down with COVID-19. Ho hum.

My biggest fear is that this goes away with summer, only to come roaring back in fall. The 1918 pandemic did that and killed of almost an entire generation (it's probably the one thing Downtown Abbey actually got right). And of course the fear that Trump will remain in office.

I am also concerned that having had a taste of how good I feel without that killer commute, I will not quietly go back to it. I NEED my job, funnily enough. Medical librarians jobs are not plentiful, especially at my pay scale. And my health insurance doesn't totally suck, so there's that. I'd spend this time looking for a new job, but I'm trying to move and get divorced, too. How many things do I take on at once? Oddly enough, the divorce and the move no longer loom large in my sights at all. They're just things on my To Do list. Pandemic does provide perspective...

This for me. So much this.

My Pop died back in mid-February, and he did everything - bills, grocery shopping, you name it. My mom has not done any of these things for years. Of course, they live 2 states and over 400 miles away from me, and while my brother lives in the same state, he lives about as far away (and has health issues to boot). In other words, neither of us can be there in a short amount of time, and etc. Add to it that Mom doesn't want to move, and has dug in since loads of well-meaning people kept asking her, "Have you decided what to do yet?" Ah, yes, that's where I get my stubborn. Mmm hmm.

So, long story short, I had been stressing over trying to help her out in all the various ways: trying to figure out what their bills are, all of her meds, the state of their finances, etc. It's not horrible, but it's not pretty, either. Taxes need filing, she's no longer very computer-savvy, she's got her own health issues that we won't get into, and etc.

Then the pandemic hit, and holy shit, did that ramp everything up.

Some of the things I was stressing about on her behalf have now just become things on the To-Do list for her. Making sure she has the basics and impressing on her how serious this all is were the biggies. She's really stepped up and is now keeping track of her bills, keeping track of her incoming and outgoing $, keeping track of her meds. She knows she has to keep any trips outside of the house to a minimum, and she is totally exercising social distancing, which is great.

Her situation is definitely not ideal, but it's what we've got.

Doesn't help that both my husband and I fall into the higher risk categories (age). And he's still going to work. At least I can work from home.

So I'm anxious and scared. Some days worse than others. Some days are not so bad. But every day there's the invisible weight of it all, and I'm left wondering how it will all turn out.

Then I remember to breathe, and that I'm here right now, as are my framily. And that helps tremendously.

Glad to hear you've got a spot, at least for the time being. Around here the National Forests are still open but all facilities are closed- camp grounds, picnic grounds etc. Dispersed camping is still allowed, along with hiking and day trips.

Albuquerque's parks, open spaces and trailheads are seeing heavy use these days (along with increased break-ins in the parking lots, the fucking bastards) but the city wants to keep them open, despite some users breaking the social-distance rules. People need a place to go, just to get out of the house and get some fresh air. I'm going for a bike ride around the neighborhood later this morning, I can do that without getting too close to anyone else.

It's pretty natural to be worried right now. We're in uncharted waters and we don't know how this plays out. There will be a lot of damage from this both at the personal and financial level. For those alive today, there will be a before and and after and they will be different at least in some ways.

Thanks for starting this thread, NAF.

I am low-level anxious most of the time now. I'm working from home, thank goodness. I'm not typically an anxious person, I'm pretty upbeat. I'm mostly worried about my husband the truck driver who is out in the world every day. He's usually laid back, too, but he's gotten pretty paranoid lately. He's 65 and in good health except for occasional asthma issues, due to allergies.

My kids are ok. My son is working from home, and seems to be stable in his job (please Lord let him keep his job!). DIL is a SAHM, and the grandkids are hanging in there. Homeschooling is a pain, of course.

So everybody I know is ok, but AAAGGGHHHHH! :eek:

Love you guys. Stay safe.

:heart:

In another thread, I said I wouldn't mind seeing the spring break dumbfucks locked up in a Masque of the Red Death situation.

I have an advanced directive/do not resucitate order on file that basically says no artificial life support. I'm not ready to go, but there's no one who depends on me so...

Monday night, after a string of really strange things that happened during the evening, I made the mistake of watching the national news and had one of the worst panic attacks I've had in years. The sense of helplessness and out of control-ness, plus not knowing when this will end, really got to me.

Very understandable. Not knowing how bad it will get or what's to come is awful. I've got to stop watching so much national news. I want to be aware of what's going on in my area but one, maybe two updates per day on the national and international news should be enough. Now if I can just stick to that.

Sputnika went to the medical offices (HMO) today. The parking lot was roped off, only one way in. A line of cars waiting as each person got their temperature checked and questioned about symptoms they may have and where they may have traveled in the last few weeks. Once admitted, hand sanitizer everywhere, checked in, and chairs moved apart in the waiting area. Appointment only.

We're going to get through this, but it's going to be one day at a time until we do. Keep the chin up people.

I watched a good YouTube video about patient zero and how the virus originated. I may do a cliff notes version of it but I'm not sure anyone really wants to know. (It was China's fault, but unintentional) If anyone really cares, let me know.

I love the quote, that's good...I'm a glass if half-full kind of person, so I am hopeful for the better norms as well...

This is a really good thread. Just hearing other people's stories and thoughts is really comforting.

Me, I spent the week feeling pretty freaked out after coming down with a fever and intense fatigue on Sunday. All the horror stories I'd read about people's fevers spiking to 103, developing pneumonia, coughing their lungs out, etc. just swirled in my head as I waited for it to get worse. Then the fever went away, but the fatigue remained. I felt optimistic, until I read the accounts of people with severe COVID symptoms starting out with a mild set that receded for a few days before the main wave hit them. So then I just sat/laid and fretted, feeling like doom was imminent.

Then yesterday I just...felt fine. No more fatigue. I've since read multiple accounts of people with similar stories, including a doctor who indeed tested positive despite just feeling tired for a couple of days and nothing else. So I'm cautiously optimistic now, even though I have no evidence that it was actually coronavirus and not something else.

Now I can go back to worrying about my parents, who I just can't seem to convince to stop going out to run errands despite their high risk status. Maddening.

As I read this thread, regardless of political persuasion, locality, etc., I realize we all share the same concerns, same anxieties and fear of the unknown, albeit to lesser (wrong word) different degrees...the one thing that does hearten me is, people are more concerned for the people around them than they are for themselves, and that's good, we have a shared compassion, it makes me feel optimistic, as I said, I'm optimistic at heart that we'll get through this, and it will be a better place on the other side...that's all I can control in my life at this time, a sense of hope...

I worry about my Mom, she's 85, I worry about my brother in CT, he's 60 and not exactly the picture of health, I worry about my son who's in New Jersey at the epicenter of this mess, but we all talk every day, sometimes numerous times a day...I do have hope, but it's not based on anything other than that's the way I am...

It reminds me of a cartoon I saw in The New Yorker years ago, it's a guy laying on a psychiatrist's couch, and the doctor is sitting in the chair next to him consulting his note pad and saying, "Well, the good new, Mr. Johnson, is that you have a good, strong, healthy ego...the bad news is it has no basis in reality..."

One thing I'm finding very helpful for my mental state is trying my very best to work toward an actual solution to a lot of these problems we're having that are, let's face it, completely man made and unnecessary.

When 3.3 MILLION people file for unemployment the same week it's titanically obvious that we absolutely MUST decouple access to healthcare from employment. Medicare For All NEEDS to happen, all the healthcare workers and every big physician's association agree that we need to move to single payer like, yesterday. And whether or not anyone likes it, there is precisely ONE presidential candidate who has been advocating for exactly that for decades. ONE. Whether or not you like Bernie, he's being proven right over and over and over again when he says we need single payer, we need a better social safety net to take care of the vulnerable (and let's face it, MOST of us are vulnerable right now!) we need a higher minimum wage, to make safe housing a human right and to stop squandering all our resources on endless wars and giving more money to the unimaginably rich. These policies, followed slavishly by R and D alike for decades in service to their own personal Mammon, have brought our country (and similar policies elsewhere have done the same for the rest of the world) to its current plight and if we don't turn around and make some serious changes then this fear and anxiety IS our new normal. We won't be going back to some imaginary halcyon period that the majority of our citizens are too young to remember even vaguely. We really need to make our new normal a better place to be.

And no matter what the wholly owned and corporate elite operated media says, over half the people in this country have not yet had their chance to cast their primary vote. Those who were urged by the DNC and the Biden campaign to go ahead and get in line to vote in their primaries during a pandemic are now sick and that responsibility is on the elites and their lackies, they did this, they put thousands at risk and likely sacrificed hundreds to the virus to further their own sick need to preserve their status quo. That status quo, as we are seeing so clearly, is dangerous if not deadly to us regular people and it's way past time we take the reins and make our society one that serves us all, not just the rich people who can flee on their yachts to their underground bunkers in New Zealand to leave the rest of us to choke on our own lungs.

We clearly see that us regular people understand the need to pull together, to help each other, to sacrifice our own comfort and desires to uphold the common good--but our leaders refuse to even invoke the Defense Production Act to go into high gear to produce the protective equipment and ventilators our frontline healthcare workers need to stay safe and help us all survive. That same protection act is invoked thousands of times per year to make more drones and bombs and other supplies for killing but it takes a factory full of GE workers going on strike to force their managers to retool their factory to make ventilators. Those in charge, and those who want to be in charge are equally reprehensible--let's get us a president that both the Republicans AND the Democrats detest and fear, I mean really, how could it possibly go worse than it already has?

Likewise. I decided I'm not watching the news anymore, so I just read the local paper in the morning and check online once or twice a day. I figure all I need to know are the broader details, and anything that might affect day-to-day life.

Other than that, all I can do is take care of myself and what's mine.

I have decided to get my national new from late night comedy shows! I know, this is a stupid way to stay on top of current events, but Colbert and Seth Meyers will tell me more or less anything super important and will probably do it in a way that won't terrify me.

I am also keeping up with my regular (digital) print news sources and local news, but they tend to be less over the top anyway.

Today I am feeling much less scared. This thread has been tremendously helpful actually. It also helps that my wife woke up and said she feels pretty good again today. She got an actual full night of sleep and maybe that was all she really needed to help her get back to recovering. Still anxious as heck, but in a less overwhelming sort of way.

I'm glad that she's on the mend.

That's good news, NAF.

That's great news. With any luck it was COVID and now she has the antibodies to protect herself.

Great news about the missus, NAF! I keep going through scares like this--daughter gets a killer headache and I'm climbing the walls, BFF runs less than a degree of fever and I'm freaking out, I have some allergies and I'm all OMG I'M DYING and if my mom doesn't answer the phone for a couple days I'm ready to drive to California to check on her. I'm trying very hard not to be insane but the world does not make it easy!

That's heartening news indeed, NAF.
Mr. DWD and I liked to watch the news on one of our local PBS stations while eating dinner. I say *liked* because after watching a piece on how hard the virus had hit Italy, and seeing rows of patients on ventilators - on their bellies - that was it. I was done. I can be a solid kind of person in a crisis, but there was something about that scene... the despair in the nurse's voice that they interviewed, along with the look in her eyes... I decided that I couldn't watch the news like that for now. The absolute humanity of it all coupled with "The sense of helplessness and out of control-ness, plus not knowing when this will end" (so well said) hit me like a ton of bricks, and it still makes me weep (yes, crying now, dammit) when I think about it.

There's this organization called Mon Ami. They'll do errands and drop stuff off, as well as social phone calls and even home assistance. Most of their volunteers are here but they are trying to spread out. They actually contacted me just a few days after I applied. Higher risk people may want to check it out. https://www.monami.io/

I just talked to my therapist about ways to calm down. She suggested keeping a regular schedule, reminding myself I am doing all I can, doing something that makes me feel helpful, and making sure to do some things I enjoy.

Youngest son is officially back at work, he works for a little diaper factory that produces reusable diapers made from hemp, he was furloughed a couple of weeks ago, they're now making surgical masks and gowns for one of the NYC hospitals, they made a mask for him, they're really nice, look like they'd fit well and snug, that's the key...

Middle son and fiancee are pretty hunkered down, his college is online, he said it's a little awkward as he's taking upper level and graduate physics classes, so it's an adjustment, but they're OK...

Oldest son in NJ is feeling up and down, we just talked to him, he's coughing and has some shortness of breath, but it's not getting worse, he said the illness cycles, he feels better, then it comes back, he started feeling symptomatic last Thursday, the nurse told him to expect 10 - 14 days, so we're hoping he's getting through it...

Stay safe, everyone...

Tonight at dinner Swimmy told us she doesn't want to die. * sigh *

We explained that we're keeping her home to keep her safe, and that not everyone who gets sick will get very sick, and that young people like her are at least risk. So she connected the dots and said she doesn't want her grandparents to die. We emphasized that we don't want that either, and that's why everyone is staying home so the doctors can do important work to come up with medicines that help people and vaccines that fight the germs.
Poor kiddo.

I was 6 when the 1968 riots broke out in Baltimore following the assassination of MLK. We were living in Baltimore, in the Homeland neighborhood, a block off of York Road...my Dad was a captain at the time in MDANG, they were all called up for the duration, we were under curfew, I just remember being scared, I had no idea why people were rioting, burning cars and stores, looting, we had no contact with my Dad during that time...I remember it vividly as I was very afraid of A Big Unknown That I Did Not Understand...

My company is having people work from home unless you work on the assembly and test line which I do as one of the lead Manufacturing Engineers. We make products that, among other things, help prevent the spread of the virus. You almost certainly seen one of them. Please no guesses what they are on the board. The stress level is unbelievable for those of us who have to show up. Months ago I planned to retire on May 1st and I am sticking to it. What a weird time to retire!

I have been there over 14 years and some of my co-workers go back with me nearly 30 years from a different place where we all used to work. I will miss many of them very much. My retirement plans of travelling around for live music are on hold for the time being obviously. I am banging around alone in my house with not much to do. Hell if I am not saving a ton of money though. Normally my main expenses are concert tickets, nice dinners out and poor choices in woman friends.

I go from anxiety to dread to optimism and back. I hate this.

You're definitely earning your retirement :eek:

Do you have any hobbies or anything you always wanted to try? You're going to need something to occupy your time, otherwise you'll go stir-crazy.

Haj, my husband is also an ME, which is why he has to go to work. It's a daily emotional roller-coaster... he's within a few years of retirement, and dammit, I want that for him.

Wishing all of us the best during these trying times. :heart: