Weaver's Web

I'm home now.

I was grateful to have the time with Mom and my sister.  I'd not seen either of them in the flesh since Thanksgiving of 2019.  That's been difficult.  In the time since, my mother has had three hip replacements (yes, I said three.  The afternoon of her first replacement she fractured around the new prosthetic joint, requiring a second replacement surgery 2 days later.  The other hip was done this past April.)  Both of my siblings had Covid, as did both their husbands, and at least two of my nephews along with their families.  Mom is at an age where she looks forward to the next occasion and makes known her to desire to be there for it, "if I am still here."  She'll be 91 in two months and while her mother made it to 108, my grandmother was not a 4 time cancer survivor.

With Mom and my sister driving cross country, to not rendezvous with them somewhere was not an option for me.  My sister wanted to keep their LA destination limited to her nuclear family, and that made their stop in Las Vegas the easiest spot for me to get to. In retrospect, I wish I had chosen somewhere else, but that would have meant both a flight as well as a car rental and a significant drive of 3 to 8 hours after my flight.

We did our best in LV to social distance from all strangers, and to stay out of anywhere with a low ceiling or where there were crowds.  There are signs EVERYWHERE indicating a mandatory mask mandate, which 80% of folks complying with it, at least nominally.  I still saw plenty of masks being worn as chin warmers, or dangling from one ear, twisting in the breeze as a paper earring. My guess, somewhere between 5 & 10% were wearing their mask improperly and another 20% not at all.  There were at least four occasions, when folks became aggressively too close to us.  There was the drunken man at noon on Monday, who ran from table to table in our very open and widely spaced restaurant shouting, "It's someone's Birthday!"  There were the two drunk young women who pushed their way unmasked into an elevator with us, as their masks dangled from one ear.  I loudly asked them to mask up and they did, but were way too drunk to do so quickly, and one of them leaned up against the elevator buttons, pushing about 1/2 of them.  Our elevator stopped at every floor between 32 and 45.  They got out on 43. 

I thought we had made it through without damage.  Then Mom started feeling ill Wednesday afternoon, after they arrived in Los Angeles.  My sister called me yesterday morning to tell me Mom was coughing and had a mild fever, & they were on their way to an urgent care.  I decided to go find myself a Covid test.  The last thing I did Monday night when we separated was to hug and kiss them both.

The nurse was just capping the nasal swab for my PCR test sample yesterday afternoon, at the walk in testing center, when the text came.  Mom has Covid.  Her rapid test was positive, twice.  She was given the monoclonal antibodies infusion, as well as a course of azithromycin and she and my sister have gone to a hotel.  My sister's rapid test was negative, and her PCR is pending. The remainder of my sister's family have arrived and they are quarantining from them.  Best laid plans and all that.

I started coughing last night.  No fever.  No headache, Just a mildly productive, barking cough.  I still have my sense of smell and taste. I will be very surprised if my PCR comes back negative.  Now having had the two doses of Pfizer mRNA vaccine, I am unlikely to get seriously ill. I also know exactly where to go to get the Monoclonals should the need arise, so honestly, I'm not especially worried.  I AM staying home and avoiding everyone, other than my husband, who was already exposed to me intimately for 48 hours before I had any symptoms whatsoever, and he too is post both doses of the vaccine. 

I am however incredibly ticked at the idiots who put us at unnecessary risk (although I am squelching the urge to reach for voodoo dolls in their image.  I don't need their Karma.)  I am royally pissed off at so many forces right now.  Places that are making little to no effort to enforce mask mandates. Republican legislators that are pushing for full re-opening of everything and who are simultaneously blocking mandates for both masks & for vaccines.  After 19 months in isolation, I am almost certainly now infected, and a potential vector for this illness, despite all my social distancing, and masking all that time. 

Please forgive the graphic image, but I just succeeded in coughing up one small globule of mucous that was deep in my chest, and looking down at that speck the size of my pinky nail, certain it contains a virus that could cost someone their life is still very sobering, were I as unscrupulous as Greg Abbot, Kristi Noem or Ron DeSantis.  I am not scared for my own well-being right this moment, at least not consciously so, but I'm angry that I'm here, and I'm angry that a part of me would welcome any of those three politicians to share a cup of coffee with me right this moment, here in my kitchen, unmasked.  Dorothy Parker is alleged to have said, "If you have nothing nice to say, sit next to me!" Well Gov. Noem, come, pull up a chair.  Let me cut you a slice of coffee cake.