COVID for Christmas

Welp, it's official. My nearly 4 year streak is probably over. My mom and sis, who I've spent 24/7 with the last 3 days, are very sick and tested positive for COVID today. 

My sis has been vomiting once every so often randomly for the past 2 months, so we didn't even think twice when she got sick Christmas Eve. She had gone to the Dr for it and he said it was allergies (?!). On Christmas Day, she felt nauseated and was coughing. But she vapes constantly and smokes sometimes and is generally in very bad health and coughs constantly, so we didn't think twice about her symptoms. Honestly, she seemed pretty normal until Christmas Day. The day after Christmas, she said she was feeling better (?), so we thought it was a one-off health issue she was having, as usual.

But today she felt much much worse and had a sore throat, fever, chills, the works, and tested herself finally. Positive!

My mom also had a sore throat and was coughing/sneezing and felt terrible, so she tested too. Positive!

So far my dad is negative, knock on wood. I don't know how long that can last, though. We have been stuck together like glue all through the holidays, and I got an Aranet CO2 monitor for Christmas, and it says our air quality is pretty bad -- 1300 ppm CO2 or so inside the house, without any windows or doors open. Sometimes good window and door seals and insulation is a bad thing...

I feel totally fine - I'll test once I get any symptoms at all. We don't have that many tests in stores here anymore so I hate wasting them. And I wear my N95 mask everywhere (even in the house now, when I leave my room!) and am the only able bodied person left to take care of my mom, dad, and sis and the household, so it doesn't actually matter if I'm positive right now or not - I'm gonna be the one doing everything since I am the only one able to.

If I'm supposed to go somewhere (like my friend's house on Saturday - Monday for New Year's Eve fun) or I start feeling ill, I'll pop open a test for sure. Right now I have both of my room windows open and I use the bathroom in my parents' room (my mom is sleeping on the couch since my dad is bedridden with his cancer - my mom will be using the main house bathroom).

With my mom and sis down, I'm the sole caregiver to my dad, sis, AND mom right now. Whew. When I say I'm glad I didn't have kids/a family of my own -- the gratefulness is just re-emphasized during times like this. I cannot imagine trying to do this every day for decades. I'm also trying to do my 8+ hours of PhD and job work on top of the caregiving duties. 

It's a lot, but as an ADHD person, this is when I'm at my BEST - emergency situations or where I'm needed is where I shine. I  like being super useful to the people I love the most, and that is a really powerful motivation.

Once the news hit, I immediately sprung into action, going to the pharmacy (of course in my N95) to stock up on everything we'd need for a few days or so. My sis is staying at her apartment now, so I got a bunch of stuff to drop off at her place, along with all of her Christmas gifts. I took out the trash, monitored the CO2, sanitized all common surfaces, made my mom and dad dinner and dessert, did the dishes, cleaned the kitchen, fetched them their meds and OJ and ginger ale and water, and also got some work done! That's more than I've managed to do in 1 day in months, probably. 

In some ways, it feels like we've practiced for this for nearly 4 years. In the early days of COVID, when I was taking my dad to his chemo appointments (our only foray out of the house to inside spaces), we separated the bathrooms, sleeping arrangements, and care-taking duties similarly. Dad and I took the primary bathroom, mom slept on the couch, I slept in my old childhood bedroom, Dad slept in the primary bedroom where he spends 99% of his time. Back then, Mom would cook for us and deliver the meals to our bedroom doors. This time, I've got full rein of the kitchen, which I've declared a clean space. Mom gets the living room and main bathroom. Unfortunately, I have to go past the main bathroom and living room to get to the kitchen, but I wear my N95 every time I leave my room, and luckily my childhood bedroom and the primary bedroom and bathroom are at the same end of the house and close to one another so Dad and I are relatively (?) isolated from infectious Mom down the hall in the living room.

In NZ, my flatmate had COVID and we separated our forays into the only bathroom and kitchen by texting each other when we had to use it. We stayed in our bedrooms except for when we needed to grab deliveries, make food, or use the bathroom. I avoided it this way once. I don't think I'll be as lucky this time but we'll see how the next few days go. As long as I'm still feeling OK, I'll be doing all of the caretaking, cleaning, chores, errands, etc., around here. I'm just grateful that I was here when my family got COVID finally, so I can take care of them. If I were in NZ right now, I'd feel so guilt-ridden!! Esp because no one would be around to take care of my dad right now. Even if my mom masked up, she feels so terrible she can't leave the couch and has been sleeping all day.  

Crossed fingers and toes and all the things!

Got the new Novavax!

Documenting it here - I received the new novavax vaccine yesterday, 18 December 2023, in the US. 

New Zealand lags terribly behind the world in terms of new vaccination option approvals. It'll be months before other Kiwis get the chance to receive the new Novavax. Such a shame since the virus mutates so quickly.

Back in the US!

Sorry for the unexpected hiatus! I got busy trying to finish things up at work and home (including getting new flatmates, ugh) before I had to head to the US for a family wedding on 1 November. 

I've now been at home for almost a month, but my laptop suddenly failed a day or two after arriving back. It went to the repair shop for two and a half weeks. The hard drive failed, so I lost all of that data (I think I last backed everything up in early October (?) but we'll see when I arrive back in NZ - not much I can do from the US!). On top of my PhD work, the thought of re-downloading all of my programs and setting up my computer back the way I like it plus losing some of my documents was too overwhelming. I just started bawling and couldn't stop til my mom hugged me. Then my dad started telling me I told you so and yelling at me for not backing everything up every single day and it set me off again. So I've been a bit stressed, sad, angry, and annoyed at this whole computer thing.

I had Thanksgiving with family for the first time in probably a decade and a half or so. I've definitely missed it! And I'll have Christmas with family for the first time in a decade this year. WOWZA. 

Family is...A LOT. But I'm trying to enjoy the little good moments I have with them while I can, even though the rest of the time things are really tense and awful here.

My dad is still bedridden and needs constant care, feeding, entertainment, help. It's an untenable situation but he refuses to go to a rest home, or move into a more accessible home that's easier to keep up with. My mom does what she can but it's just too much for her, esp at 74. He constantly yells at her, calls her terrible names, says she's lazy, a B, useless, etc. because she doesn't make hot gourmet meals to order for him 3x a day and isn't able to keep up with him and all of his medications, care, doctor's appointments, etc., her own health issues, my sister and her  health issues, all her other obligations to people like my aunt who is also seriously ill, the housework, etc. It's so gross and complicated because of course we love him but he is straight up super abusive to her on the daily and, on fewer occasions, to me and my sister. Nothing is ever good enough for him. We try to bring him the food he wants exactly the way he wants it - it's always a laundry list of specific foods and ways to prepare it or an order from a restaurant an hour away that we have to pick up - and he finds something wrong with it every. dang. time. And then he insults us for getting it "so wrong." For example he's told me multiple times that I couldn't find a man to marry me because I'm so sh*t at making coffee and one time because I didn't know the exact correct amount of ketchup and mustard to put on a plate for him to dip his McDonald's into (I brought the whole bottles of condiments for him to decide how much he wanted because I knew I'd get it wrong if I guessed how much he wanted on the plate - that was apparently the WRONG THING TO DO, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT IS A TERRIBLE AND WRONG THING TO DO?!). If there is even a slight chance that I would be put in a situation like my dad puts my mom in if I got married, absolutely no thank you.

He's a veteran covered 100% for all medical care and has benefits like a home health care aid who comes 3x a week for 4 hours, so that is a blessing. But my dad refuses to let them do anything, because he is a people pleaser and because he is super racist and sexist so refuses to let them touch him or his belongings or ask them, a woman, for help. To us he calls them the n word, which of course we yell at him for each time, but it does no good. So they just sit in the living room awkwardly for half the day while the rest of the family tries to go about their business, relax, watch tv, cook food, etc. 

Sometimes they go out to their car in the driveway. I swear the last one smoked a joint while she was there because she came back smelling like pot. Then my dad gives them extra money to make them like him. 

We end up taking care of my dad while they are IN THE HOUSE. My mom once cancelled this service because she is mostly the one in the living room all the time and there's nowhere else for her to hang out and it's super awkward for her - she just wants some alone time reading books and such in between meeting my dad's demands - but my dad called them back and restored the service. It's all so stupid.  

My sis is struggling to find reasons to live and is just fed up with being mentally ill. I feel for her. She can't keep up with daily demands of life. She wets the bed every night so there is a huge mess to clean up every single morning, but she isn't meticulous or concerned enough about it to clean up properly, so everything in the house always smells like urine. She's in heart failure but doesn't know how to take care of herself or limit her eating / drinking to things that will help her health, but yells at us and gets super angry when me or my mom try to suggest anything that would actually work. She vapes in the house even though my dad has lung issues and me/my mom can't breathe when she does that. She luckily is part of a program that provides her with a small apartment to live in that's just a 5 minute drive from my parents' house, but she's always over at my parents' because she gets scared very easily. When she is in the house, it's chaos. She cooks things constantly and leaves huge food messes wherever she goes. She fell asleep on the couch yesterday and peed what must have been gallons of fluid onto my mom's brand new sofa. If my mom or I tell her to clean up something or try to wake her up when she falls asleep on the sofa so she goes to her bed, she yells, gets angry, lashes out, and still doesn't do what she's supposed to. Then my dad gets in the mix to defend her, starts an argument with me or my mom, and makes everything worse. Again, it's all so complicated and sad. 

It definitely shows that you can give folks lots of benefits but they have to be willing or have the where-with-all to use the benefits. My sis and dad both need to be in a 24 hour residential care home where they have proper help. I worry at the toll this is all taking on my mom.

I'm supposed to be working on my PhD while at home, but as you can imagine, I'm super stressed and distracted. I go back to NZ in early January. I'm both dreading it but also looking forward to it. Things are challenging everywhere, it's just a different kind of challenging!