Okay so this is going to be much harder than I thought. My mom has been coming over daily to help with the kids while Sarah and I work but this is problematic for two reasons:
- She stops on Friday to return to work herself
- This virus is spreading faster and more easily than we thought and what if we cross-contaminate each other?
It’s been really amazing having my mom here for these last few days and I’m super happy that she’ll be here through the end of the week, but I’m honestly scared about the whole situation. My anxiety is shooting through the roof on a nightly basis – I play the new coronavirus game of “allergies or coronavirus?” nightly as I lay in my son’s bed to help him fall asleep. I feel aches, my head hurts, and my head feels hot. Sometimes I feel a tickle in my throat and wonder if that’s the beginning of my COVID-19 symptoms. News reports are saying that people notice a strangely sore throat before symptoms set in. Am I putting my son at risk by laying with him to help him fall asleep? My temperature is reading 98.9 tonight (higher than I’ve ever seen it outside of a flu-induced fever), so is it time to start self-isolating away from my family? This is crazy.
There’s this strange morbid tradeoff that I consider many nights. Do I risk crying wolf and self isolating just to have it be nothing? I can’t imagine sticking my wife with caring for our 3 month old and nearly 4 year old while I lay in the basement watching TV thinking I’m sick with something I don’t have. How do I come back from that and what happens if it isn’t real this time but is real next week? Do I put off self isolation because of the previous false alarm and get my whole family sick because of it? I can no longer tell if I’m overreacting, protecting my family, or if anxiety has completely taken over my logic and it’s no longer possible for me to do what’s best for us all. Dr. Fauci said that if it feels like you’re overreacting you’re probably doing everything right. I’ll have to just trust him and adopt that as my mantra.
My mom and I were sitting on the couch earlier chatting about all of this and where things go from here. I thought about how we no longer have any idea what the future may look like and said “who knows, maybe we’re not all sitting in this house together a month from now. Maybe we won’t all be okay and this family will be even smaller than it is right now.” It scares me to think that I might be right. That someone I know and love might die from this virus.
Am I putting my mother at risk by having her come over to our house, unnecessarily, every day to make things easier for us? Is she putting us at risk by coming over every day?
Michael Singletary 