Quarantine Stories – Day 12

Wednesday, March 25, 2020 – Day 12 of Quarantine

Well, it’s been a busy few days.

Becky had an appointment with her doctor yesterday, and the Doctor had explicitly requested that I come in with Becky for it. (Since Becky has trouble remembering or explaining things.) I expected it to have been canceled, but it was on anyway.

Her Doctor is at the big Medical Center down on Roswell Road, the same place she had her tests a few weeks ago. We had to go through the check on the entrance again, and they gave us the orange passcard again. They didn’t want to let me in at first because I’m still coughing from my allergies, but when I showed how the doctor wanted me to be there, they let me in.

The waiting room was almost empty, and the entire staff was wearing masks. We got in fairly quickly, and I talked to the Doctor. She mainly wanted to know some details around Becky’s cancer and some other tests that had come up around that time that had never been followed up on. She also asked about Becky’s stomach issues and mental issues, and I answered as tactfully as I could.

Then Becky went to the restroom for a bit, and I could tell her the details. Like how I would have to take Becky to Urgent Care because she was in such pain in her stomach, but she was fine when she got there and wanted to go out to eat immediately afterward. And how the Neuropsychological Exam she had been given showed no pattern and that it was almost as if she was deliberately trying to fail the exam.

I also told her that (several Doctors now) had said that Becky’s problems are mental. She gets stressed out, which makes her feel sick, but once she has my attention and the attention of the Doctors at Urgent Care or the ER, she was suddenly fine. She just wants attention. The Doctor did say that if she had a real medical problem with her stomach, she wouldn’t want to get something to eat only an hour or so later.

Becky came back in, and I couldn’t say much more, but the Doctor was looking at Becky’s charts and told me that she was seeing what I had just told her in the notes of some of Becky’s earlier visits to other places.

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We did get a prescription for Becky for some calcium supplements, and we went up to the Kroger with the pharmacy she uses. They didn’t have it ready yet, and Becky wanted to go grocery shopping. But she didn’t want to go to Kroger; she wanted to go to Publix. So we drove a few miles to the Publix.

There I found what she was wanting. Publix used to make these prepared meals that you just have to cook. One of them is a strip of flank steak, with cheese and spinach, rolled into a spiral. Becky likes these. A lot. For the past month or two, we’ve been having these two or three times a week! She wanted one of those.

Unfortunately, Publix isn’t making those prepared meals anymore because they’re selling out of everything so fast. So we didn’t get any.

We did get various things, then went back to Kroger. There, Becky decided we needed to do even more shopping. So, we bought more stuff. And we got the prescription.

Everyone is still out of everything paper. We got two expensive boxes of kleenex, and that was it.

And everyone is limiting you on what you can buy now. We could only get two cans of soup. Not two cans of each kind, just two total. Same for frozen meals. Same for frozen pizza.

I have no idea where the toilet paper is going. You would think that most everyone has bought a year’s supply at this point. I’ve noticed a few stores are saying that they won’t take returns of them anymore.

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All of that took half my day, so I did my best to get work done in the afternoon. I’m still struggling. I’ve asked someone to look at it and tell me what I’m missing, but they are either not seeing my Slack messages or are too busy on other things. I’ll keep struggling.

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And, proving that things are getting serious, Waffle House has closed a bunch of their restaurants. Given that FEMA uses what they call the “Waffle House” index to gauge how bad the situation is (basically they never close and the more of their menu they are running, the better things are), the fact that they are closing stores means that things are getting really bad.

And Cobb County has declared a state of emergency. Not sure what that means beyond the fact that all schools are closed through almost the end of April. I guess we’ll see how things are doing then.