healthcare – life with interest

Pregnant in a Pandemic

October 21, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

I had always planned to start trying for my second child 18 months after my first was born. I figured, like my first, this whole miracle of life thing would take months and require medical support like the creation of my first child. At age 36 I didn’t want to look back and think I waited too long to try. I wanted to give my son at least one sibling, maybe two. After my father’s death two years ago, and overall being so far from any family with children my son’s age, and growing up in a large extended family, it hit me hard how important it was to make my own little big family if I could.

Then, a global pandemic happened. In case you haven’t noticed.

I wasn’t in denial of what that meant. I weighed the pros and the many cons. I didn’t mind the idea of not seeing people during my pregnancy or missing things like baby showers and such. If it had been my first pregnancy I would be missing all that but been there, done that, and ok with hibernating these nine months. But I was expecting it to take a while to get pregnant—putting me at a late spring or summer or fall due date—after the second and likely worst peak of the pandemic had past. But the pandemic and my body had other ideas.

In March, I either had COVID or some form of debilitating anxiety where I couldn’t eat. The reason I think it was COVID is that my go-to when I am anxious is eating. But in a month, I lost 8lbs. I also had a lot of lung issues and ended up getting an inhaler and feeling liquid in my lungs for a while. It could have been bad allergies (I don’t have allergies typically) or maybe I was just losing it—but nonetheless I ended up eating healthy/less and with the massive reduction in social anxiety (not having to interact with other humans was just a huge relief, esp coming off what might have been an actual manic episode the prior fall and early winter) my body apparently said “ok, you are ready to be a mom again.”

With my first son, I took my pregnancy test on my 34th birthday. With this one, it was Mother’s Day. I figured my life is secretly scripted so of course I’d find out on mom’s day that I had rapidly reproduced this time around. I used a cheap-o test at first and there was a very very faint line. My text to a friend confirmed it was there. The more expensive test I took a few minutes later said it definitely was there. Pregnant. In a pandemic.

It was no longer a — well maybe I’ll get pregnant and maybe I’ll have to deal with the tail end of the pandemic in a while and maybe that will be difficult. It was—you are delivering in January. The exact month the pandemic will probably be at its actual worst, after a summer of people flouting the rules, after nearly a year of people saying they just want to get back to normal life. Oh, and for fun let’s make your due date two days after the inauguration what will likely be the most contested election in American history, when our prior president may refuse to leave office should be not get re-elected. Why not?

There are definitely pros to being pregnant during a pandemic. For starters, being able to work from home my entire pregnancy is a blessing. As I’m older now, this pregnancy has been a bit harder on me. I think part of that is because I’m not moving enough (which means I would be better off going to an office dusky) but being able to lie down and work, or sit down and wait for a wave of nausea to pass without getting any weird looks at the office is one of the best things about this specific situation. While last time I felt I had to push myself to not be disabled by pregnancy (working up until my due date with horrible carpal tunnel at the end and eventually being diagnosed with gestational hypertension and needing to be induced) I can take this pregnancy easy. Ish. I mean as easy as one can take a pregnancy with no childcare and a two year old wanting attention all day.

Yes, a negative of the pandemic has definitely been the loss of childcare. Prior to the pandemic my FIL came to watch our son four days a week. He enjoyed it and it worked out well for us. But then with COVID we couldn’t risk getting him sick—even though we immediately went into isolation and were being as careful as possible, I had to go to a few doctors appointments so we had to stop seeing my in laws for a while. My husband, who works flexible hours, stepped up to take on the bulk of the childcare. At first, that seemed to work well. I was thriving at work, sleeping well, able to focus without the commute and anxiety of judging myself so harshly for every movement around others. For a few months, I felt, hey, I can get the hang of this pandemic life.

My husband was definitely struggling, though, and as my pregnancy progressed the sleep I was getting turned into random wakings in the middle of the night. I began to be sad overall about the pandemic—about how my son cannot play with other kids, about how my mom can’t see her grandchild until who knows when, about how my sister and my son’s only aunt may not see him for years. We eventually made the choice to see our in laws again, but only 2 weeks after any in person doctor’s appointment. We have completely isolated otherwise, except for going around with our realtor looking at empty houses as we wanted to buy and move before baby number two. I think that little socialization and activity kept me sane these past few months. Oh, and we bought a house (also known as baby #3.) So we have been keeping busy. My son seems ok as he doesn’t know what he is missing. He is now used to mommy grabbing him when we are out and an older kid comes too close, like at the empty park the other night when an unmasked pre-teen came storming out of nowhere and sat right behind my unsuspecting son. Now that some parks are open we will go only when they are empty, and we wash hands after. It seems low risk. But who knows. We do our best. But like everyone else we can still get sick.

Pregnant women are much more likely to end up on a ventilator if we get COVID-19. I would very much prefer to not end up on a vent in my third trimester or ever. I’m scared now, a bit, but being as careful as I can be. I have only a handful of in-person doctor’s appointments left. I’ll go and wear my mask and try to stay far away from other humans and hope I can stay healthy. I worry about what happens when I go to the hospital to give birth. I worry about wearing a mask while in labor when I am already panicked and finding it hard to breathe. I worry about looking at every nurse and doctor who helps me while in the hospital and wondering — do they have COVID? What if I get COVID while in the hospital? Should I have a home birth? Should I get to the hospital so late I give birth in the parking lot and am close enough if anything goes wrong they can whisk me or baby inside and save our lives? What if I get sick at the hospital and die a few weeks later, leaving my kids with no mom? What if I get my husband, who has some high risk medical conditions, sick and leave my kids without a dad—and me without a husband?

But I keep reminding myself pregnancy is a risk in and of itself. Everything in life is risk. So I just need to be as careful as possible, keep calm, and carry on.

I mourn all the things I am missing out on this pregnancy. There has been little time to celebrate my growing bump. I am sad for the weeks ahead, after birth, when I can’t connect with other new mothers as I did last time. I worry for all the pregnant woman and new moms who are essential workers—or married to one—who aren’t able to lock themselves away from the virus.

Overall I, personally, am doing well. My concentration has gone to shit these past few months, but I’m surviving. After a few solid months at work when I was doing well, I came crashing down with the exhaustion and anxiety that is life these days. I keep reminding myself that just surviving—and doing the best I can (as long as I can keep my job, hopefully)—is enough right now. Gone are my fantasizes of thriving in my career, moving up the ladder, what have you. I can be a good employee and a mom and I don’t have to be a leader or brilliant or whatever it is that is worker bees think equals success. I am in a very good place if I can just hold it together mentally, and physically. I can have this baby and experience all of that and see what life looks like on the other side of it.

For now, I’m so grateful for the last months, for working from home and being able to see my son grow up. I didn’t see him much in his first year. I don’t have time or energy now to see him as much as I would like in a more present way, but I’m here nonetheless. I’m here to see him wake up and for a quick lunchtime cuddle and afternoon laugh. This has reminded me of how much I was missing. It really had made me realize what matters in life. In a sense, I think there is something to be said about being forced to hole up and slow down. And, assuming WFH will stick for a while, I look forward to being able to breastfeed longer versus having to sneak away to the mom’s room to pump every few hours. To not have to drive to the office in those first months after maternity leave when I almost got into an accident too many times to count because who sleeps with a <6 month old?

So I’m focused on the positives. And survival. And trying to move on to this next home-owning, mom-to-two, mentally stable (hopefully) phase of my life. I’ll do my best, but for the first time in my life, maybe I won’t give it my all. And I’m ok with that.

Politics, Etc.

Today is the Day I Grew Up.

April 3, 2020April 3, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

It seems with every passing year, there are a few stretches of 24 hours where I mutter that to myself under my breath, or allow its veribage float and flutter maniacally in my mind for a brief while, only to be forced out by reconciling my desire to not be old with not actually being old. There was the day I graduated high school, then, the day an airplane–then another–hit the Twin Towers and I watched a city that was once my urban backyard crumble with a vulnerability I never mentally allowed it to have…

…there was the day I got my first real job, the day I got my first solo apartment, and the day I moved back in with roommates. The days of frantic calls from home and hospitals leading up to the day my father died. The traumatic birth of my son, when I lie on a hospital bed, seconds after giving birth, trying to tell myself my son died, just to prepare myself for the absolute worst after the doctors took him from me and tried to get him to breathe on his own (it took over 36 hours for that to happen.) The day my son first called me mommy and not “dada!” (well, it was more like “mommy mommy mommy.”) The day I saw my first (ok, eighth) grey hair and decided I wouldn’t pluck it from my head.

But none of those experiences aged me so permanently as living through an–actual–global pandemic. With so many humans having to life through horrific wars, this pandemic, which kills under 1% of its victims in most regions, is a “baby war.” Even those who feel the impacts of it more acutely, in job losses or crippling illness, are still unlikely to die from it. More will know someone who passes from the disease when all is said and done, but for a horrible pandemic, it, well, it could be a lot more horrible.

Still–as a mother, as a 36 year old woman less than four years away from turning 40–as a worker who is trying to balance working from home without childcare and still being a mother and still having some semblance of sanity AND managing burning waves of anxiety that rip me apart from my inside until I’m left hollow and shaken–I feel–old. I feel my age. I feel those 36 years of knowing exactly what all this is. Of watching people ignoring health official recommendations. Of seeing how in our wealthy country we somehow do not have the proper protections for our vulnerable healthcare workers and EMTs on the front lines. Of watching democracy fall apart because people would rather believe whatever it is they want to believe based on what makes them feel safe, rather than think for themselves. Of watching foreign powers infiltrate our social media and deliver a constant feed of Fake News to further terrorize our democracy into a shadow of its former self.

I grew up, because I know too much, and pay too much attention to all of it. I envy those who find comfort in conspiracy theories and/or religion. I see my life ahead of me, however long that is, of a clear next phase of my reality. I’m not a “young–carefree–mom.” I’m a mother who worries and wonders what will come of our country and our world. It’s not just this pandemic. The pandemic brought to the forefront what is already going on and shone a bright light on rapidly rising inequality and wealth distribution. It shows those of us who care to look that our nation is fractured, possibly past the point of return, though it will take a while for it to crumble. It is, perhaps, the beginning of the fall of the American empire–which is maybe not a horrible thing for the history books, but not so great as a citizen. I question what that means and look to foreign political leaders who are using this situation to consolidate power and take on authoritarian rule overnight.

Growing up means seeing what’s there. The cracks. Seeing all of the cracks in the foundation of our society and being forced to accept that there is nothing to do to avoid its collapse. And, as history tells us, societies must collapse and be reborn in some other model. And here I sit, just a 36 year old woman, a mother, an employee, a half-decent friend, a someone, a no one, just watching the fantastical stability of society slowly, quickly, and again slowly combust, right before my very eyes.

Today is the day I grew up. And this time, I’m aging at full speed, with society etching worry lines into my forehead, and painting dark circles of sleepless nights under my eyes.

Politics, Etc.

The World Catches Fire

March 15, 2020March 15, 2020by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

It happened in the blink of an eye. Like in the movies. One day, we heard about some people in China getting infected with some new virus from–rumor had it–a live bat sold at a market that someone possibly made into bat soup. It was there. Then everywhere. Then here.

Wuhan, China. The epicenter of the virus. A city that I, like many Americans, had never heard of until this sudden onset of illness that immediately sounded the alarms of potential pandemic amongst those in the know. I wasn’t in the know. I continued my daily routine and tried to take comfort in the vast distance between my Silicon Valley California home and the horror that was unfolding in China.

Then came Italy. And the rest of Europe. And the first cases in America. The moment I saw the headline about a nursing home outside of Seattle my heart sank. I tried not to obsess with the latest news article and statistics on this virus, but it was clear that a nursing home would not fare well with an infection that was slaughtering the frail and most vulnerable. Then, the first cases popped up in my own backyard. The first official cases. It seems the virus may have been here already for weeks. We don’t know yet. A patient was transferred to a hospital 10 minutes from my apartment. A few days later, that patient died.

Our offices closed their doors. All of the tech offices across Silicon Valley (well, most of them.) Offices full one day–full of meetings and water cooler chatter and open office chit chat, dark and silent the next. Slack and Zoom made the transition to work from home smooth logistically, but the social and mental impact of this sudden shift was jarring to all of us. We are moving forward as if the world is the same as it was, yet, suddenly in the middle of a global pandemic. We carry on because life goes on, as I imagine it did in the times of all the pandemics of the past. With our highly connected world we have the luxury of social distancing without full on social isolation, but also the continuous spread of real and false news which fuels necessary awareness as well as anxieties and misinformation. We wonder–can we go outside to get our mail? Can we take a walk around the block? Can we visit the local cafe? Plan a vacation for this summer? Will we be able to visit loved ones in assisted living facilities? How much toilet paper do we need to prepare for the apocalypse? And, most importantly, can we convince our stubborn and aging parents to take this risk seriously?

It is not as if some bomb dropped on our heads. We are not at war. Yet in other parts of the world, in the hospitals where doctors are forced to decide who to save based on their predicted outcome, it sure looks like it. Those amongst us who believe in statistics and trust statisticians fear that we are not doing enough to mitigate overwhelming our own fragile health system. That we are days behind Italy. That so many here will soon suffer. We secretly hope that our friends on Facebook posting that this is all a hoax are right, though our friends who work in healthcare and respond to their posts to inform them of how wrong they are remind us that this is all real. All too real.

We wonder if the cold we have is actually this infection. How would we know? There are no tests available unless you’ve been traveling to another country or have clearly been near someone who has tested positive. A week ago I felt a slight chill and my lungs, lungs weak since a bout of pneumonia years ago, started to tingle, then burn into a throbbing soreness. But, a week later, with no fever and cough, only sore lungs that make it slightly hard to breathe, I assume I have one of the thousands of other illnesses one can get this time of year–not Coronavirus. I still scan hundreds of articles to try to find a case similar to mine in case this might be a mild form of what I’m reading about, though I’m not sure how that would help anything at all other than in increasing my anxiety. I’m already home, already trying to not go out much, and trying to do my part.

But it’s difficult to suddenly shift into a safe set of processes in life even when one moves to isolate themselves and yet maintain an otherwise normal cadence of life. For those with children who are able to work from home, we face unplanned challenges with childcare.

My son, 19 months old, is watched daily by my 76-year-old father in law who prefers to continue his routine of taking the train from his town to ours. I am very concerned due to his age that he is putting himself at great risk doing this. But he prefers this method of transportation and I’ve yet to determine if I ought to ask him not to come at all–for we still need someone to watch our child while we work. Others face similar situations as many workers now have their children home with schools closed for weeks to try to slow the spread of this (hopefully) little plague of 2020. What do we do? There are no rules written for how any of this plays out. We can only do our best and support each other through the unknown to come.

I haven’t yet written about any of this as it has all been quite overwhelming. But I think I’ll try to write a bit more as I read earlier some recommendation that we ought to journal through this time which likely will be remembered in the history books (we can only hope not.) So I’ll write here as I do, with no particular purpose other than to share what it’s like to be alive through all of this. How one’s world, chaotic as it felt before, can be so rapidly upended that all prior chaos, from just a week earlier, mind you, feels quite quaint.

And my 19 month old with a fountain of energy to match his fountain of hair, who now says “thank you” whenever handing you an item and who yells at our Echo to play “Janis Joplin” and “Bad Guy” all day long, has no idea what is going on in the world. And for now, he doesn’t have to. Thank god that this virus is not harming children. I am terrified for our elders and the vulnerable amongst us, but I am so relieved that children are not severely impacted. The thought of living through a pandemic wiping out our youth, especially as a mother of a young child, makes me want to hide in a dark cave with my family and never come out. So, I feel grateful that of all the plagues to be unleashed into the world this time around, my son should be ok. But many others won’t be. And I think of my mother who refuses to change her behavior to try to mitigate her chance of infection or infecting others, whose doctor told her (shockingly) that this is no worse than the common flu. And all the people I know who are forced to make decisions on whether to come together to mourn the dying or to avoid further spreading of the disease. I think of all the stories coming out of Italy and the rest of the world where people are dying not because they have to die but because there aren’t enough hospital beds and ventilators and I see the charts that show we are slipping day by day closer to this exact scenario and I worry. I feel, for once in my life, my anxiety levels match the actual rational amount of anxiety for the situation at hand.

And yet, anxiety helps no one.

I told my husband, as I was trying to spin up positives for the horror unfolding int he world, that there is something beautiful about all of this–not the people dying part, of course–but how pandemics reveal that no matter how much we have or don’t have, whatever our political affiliation or ethnicity or nationality, we’re all equally vulnerable because we’re all equally human. At that moment, he let out an accidental sneeze to punctuate the statement with the most perfect unplanned comic timing possible. Even though it hurt a bit to laugh, my lungs as sore as they are, I couldn’t help but break into a deep bellied chuckle for a good minute in tandem with my husband who found his sneeze equally hilarious.

And that’s life. Nothing makes any sense and yet it all does. Sometimes it takes a disaster to pull ourselves out of the dirt so we can again see the sky. But now we’re still in the dirt, deep in it. As an atheist I’m not one for prayer, but since it’s officially our national day of prayer I’ll throw one prayer out that maybe this will all blow over and soon we’ll be making “too soon” jokes after the fact. But I have little faith my prayer or anyone’s prayers will do much of anything. Our government officials are, not surprisingly, failing us. I don’t want to get into politics here. Not in this post. But it is terrifying how this crisis is being handled. And I sit here, as if watching a horror film, waiting as the next weeks unfold, with my lungs burning and throbbing with something, and my mind racing through what might be coming a week from now, seeing how much has changed from a just a week ago.

Random Musings

Spilled.

December 31, 2019by Life With InterestLeave a Comment

If it was the cancer, I’d be devastated, still, but not living with this dripping open wound. When someone is so stubborn, it’s nearly impossible to change their behavior. Maybe entirely impossible. But still, his cause of death does not sit right with my heart, and it certainly didn’t sit right with his.

With a pacemaker put in just a week or so prior, and a box not set up properly by the rehab home that was supposed to notify the hospital in case of any problems, and a man alone with no one to help him, screaming deliriously into the night. How fast did they go to him? What happened in his last hours? He called my mother and told her how frightened he was, they were taking him on a ship. She told him to go to sleep, he was just having a bad dream. It wasn’t a bad dream. It was the worst dream. The end dream.

In my own deliriousness just a week after having my son and pumping all hours night and day to keep my milk supply alive I received a call at midnight—a few moments after going to sleep for my needed hour—that my father was dead.

All the calls and trying to coordinate doctors and convince him to accept treatment when he wasn’t in the right state of mind and beg him to eat a god damn banana to increase his potassium levels were useless or maybe caused more harm than good. I was the one who recommended the rehab by his mother’s home—I should have instead pushed for one closest to a hospital.

And yet rehab was a joke in that he was not being rehabilitated. His heart was failing. He couldn’t stand up without his blood pressure dropping to dangerous levels. I couldn’t go see him in my third trimester. I knew the end was near but did not think it was quite so near as his cancer was not spreading so fast and maybe we at least had a few months left—some time to say goodbye.

He pushed himself too hard in physical therapy to stand and no one stopped him. The last video of him my mother sent was him standing and smiling and taking a few steps. He thought he was getting better. Getting out. Maybe that’s a good thing. But if he hadn’t pushed himself so hard that day… if it wasn’t a Friday and then the weekend with less staff… if the rehab wasn’t in the middle of a big move to an entirely new building distracting the workers from their other duties… if we pushed to figure out how to get him seen by a specialist even though insurance wouldn’t cover medical transport and he couldn’t sit up… if we had yelled at the specialists to see him now not in a month and yes we know they are busy but this is an emergency… if we listened to him about not trusting the doctor at the rehab who was changing his blood pressure mediations… if he ever had a primary care doctor instead of only cancer specialists… if only healthcare wasn’t so disjointed and managed as if our bodies were one connected system instead of parts to be managed by specialists who don’t speak to each other… if only doctors at hospitals who changed out on shifts understood what the doctor on the prior shift said or recommended. It only there was some consistency and sanity in all of it.

He was a very sick, dying man. No one would question that. In his delirium his worst cake out—and the nurses and doctors did their jobs as they do, but their empathy if they had any drained with their patience. But after all of that… from the first day in the hospital in June until his passing in August and my body aching with third trimester pains and heart aching wondering if I’d ever see him again and if he’d ever meet his grandchild then breaking when I was told at midnight that horrible night that he never would… I’m a mess of a human. Crippled, more than before. It’s not like I had such a perfect relationship with my father, but I felt a responsibility to him, to hear him, to help him, to ensure he had the most peaceful death possible when it had to happen, and I achieved none of that.

Some nights he shows up in my dreams. I don’t believe in an afterlife, they are just dreams. But still, they are so real. He is there with my son and they are so happy together. And then I wake up and I remember reality. My mind slips to imaging his corpse, nearly two years buried, and the moment at his funeral I saw him dead, though I shouldn’t have, as it isn’t something Jews do, but my mother had to identify the body and my non Jewish aunt recommended I put something of my sons in his casket to bury him with. So I put the frog hat that I took my son home from the hospital in on his shoulder and looked at him dead for a few seconds but those seconds etched themselves into my mind for a lifetime and I see them each time I awake from these all-too-frequent dreams.

But death impacts all of us and we all lose our parents sooner or later. And other loved ones. And ourselves. So I try to lift myself out of this broken state and use it to fuel a drive to make the most out of every moment. I’m trying. But failing. Maybe now, nearly a year and a half later, I’m starting to truly dig out of it. To accept he’s really not coming back. That time is never enough. That memories fade no matter how hard you try to cling to them. And no matter what freezes your heart, life moves on, cold and emotionless. It doesn’t wait for you or anyone.