#ding dong I still have covid trauma

[redrobin-detective]

Do not tell me I don’t have to wear a mask in public anymore. Do not tell it’s “safe” now or that the CDC says this or that. Do not look at me, with my mask on of my own volition and tell me it’s okay because it wasn’t and still isn’t okay. 

It wasn’t okay when my hospital was bursting to the brim and I was working 4/5 shifts a week just so we could stay afloat. It wasn’t okay when I watched people die, suffocating, crying, in pain and then simply had to move onto the next patient and hope I could save this one. It wasn’t okay when I’m using google translate in between times in the unit to look up the phrases “I’m here” “this is your medicine, it will help you” “just stay calm it’s okay” to my non-english speaking patients even though I knew it was all a lie. It wasn’t okay when I’d sometimes want to rip off all my PPE because the gloves and gown and PAPR hood was the last thing my dying patient would see and feel and it was bad enough they were dying but to die alone in a sterile bubble with latex and plastic between you and human skin.

Things are better now, we have a vaccine, we have down trending numbers (in some areas) but do NOT smile and patronize me and tell me I’m being silly for wearing a mask when I saw first fucking hand how absolutely devastating this disease was. 

#covid19 #ding dong I still have covid trauma #my block is having a 4th party and I was the only one in a mask #and all the middle age housewives and husbands are smiling pitiyingly at me #my mom is loudly proclaiming i'm "just being crazy' for still wearing a mask out #I'm fucking sorry Karen how many people did YOU have die in your arms #Pam did you sleep on the couch in the resident's lounge in between shifts bc you were so damned exhausted #Marty did you have people gripping at your gown scared and alone and you know you will be the last person he sees #Were you there Steve to set up Ipad zoom calls at literally any time of day or night so families and patients could see each other maybe for #the last time #fuck you and your white fucking privelage #you who got to work from home and call the pandemic a Vacation #i was on the front lines and I saw fucking everyone young old black white rich poor just be devastated #so I'll wear my mask as long as I damn well please

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter, 7 January, 2022

7 January, 2022

Dear Dad--

You probably won’t receive this letter for a long time, if ever, because you’re being a bit of a ding-dong right now. But that’s okay. It occurred to me while I was smoking in my bathroom just now (under the exhaust fan) that these letters don’t actually require your observation in order to exist. Perhaps they should continue, if, for no other reason, they serve as a documentary of my weekly life. So because you’re not reading this any time soon, I suppose I’m a bit more free to talk about potentially taboo subjects (Cocks! Cocks! Cocks and buttholes!) and I can make the letters as short as I wish (The End, motherfucker! Lol j/k). Before, I have always striven for two good, fat, single spaced pages, always retaining the option to make it longer if the muse was upon me.

It is my eight year wedding anniversary today. Me and Z have been gay married since we got our rings in the mail and put them on, which was January 8, 2014. I’ve just done some checking to confirm this. I think because we are both men, we’re naturally unskilled at remembering the exact date our marriage started, and have to write it down somewhere. And we didn’t have our wedding until some time later. There’s a guy I talk to in the smoking section at work, named Mike, who works in surveillance, and I think he just figured out in the last couple of weeks that I’m married to another man. (I believe I said something about my husband and it caught him off guard, as it sometimes does those who assume me to be straight.) So recently he asked what I had planned for my weekend, and I said it was my anniversary, eight years, and it caught him off guard again, because he’s only been married to his female wife for about (and it took him a good while to sort through the math) four years. It’s neat when you say you’re married X years and the person with whom you're conversing has been married LESS than that. It means you win, right?

And it’s snowing for our anniversary! Oh, it’s a nice day for a white wedding. It’s snowing hard, and it’s supposed to continue snowing hard all day. Because we’re expecting several inches of snow, it’s cause for a Winter Storm Warning. And we were going to try a Greek place we’ve never been to before for our anniversary dinner. Going to have to shovel the drive, but that’s okay, because neither of us hates doing that. I’ve heard that when a fat old guy has a heart attack shoveling snow, and he goes to the emergency room, he’s referred to as a shovel. “We got a shovel in trauma one.”

Oh, my closest coworker Justin has tested positive for Covid. This sucks in several dimensions; now I’ve been exposed, and if I’m carrying anything, but asymptomatic--whether temporarily or…not so much--I’m exposing everyone else I come into contact with. It also means Justin has to quarantine for five days, and can’t come to work. This means that, instead of coming to work, doing half the seven audits, taking my time, having a lunch break, etc., I’m doing all seven audits myself, which can take all day. It can take longer than all day if anything goes seriously pear-shaped, like getting locked out of our computers, which happens from time to time. This means that I’m also getting a one-day weekend instead of a two-day weekend. Today is my weekend. Today is it. That’s why I’m writing this letter now, even though it’s only Friday. It will be somewhat nice to get a paycheck with a few hours of overtime, but since it all evaporates once it hits the monthly bills, I’m having a hard time finding the inspirational part.

On top of that, I have about six days left in this lifetime when I can chew my own food with my own teeth. On the 13th of this month, the dentist is going to pull two wisdom teeth and a molar on my right back side. After that, I’ll have lost about 90% of my chewing teeth, with the few remaining ones all on the bottom left. I’ll still have my smile; all the front teeth will remain, but the big ones you use to grind up your steak will be gone. I’ve already begun the process of getting partial dentures. I hate pretty much everything about this, and when I think of it, or deal with it directly, it tends to be unpleasant. I can easily find the silver lining, however: I’m going to get all the problems with my teeth taken care of now, and by the time it’s done, I’ll have some store bought teeth I can use, and I won’t have any more pain. Right now I’m consuming uncomfortably large amounts of ibuprofen some days. I hope this dentist has very good pain management kung fu.

So I am not without a plan when it comes to chewing my future steak. I’ll get two partial dentures, I assume, one for top teeth and one for bottom. The dentist said they would have a reciprocal property that would reinforce their strength by, I assume, the top ones mashing against the bottom ones. Thusly is their position in your mouth reinforced, and thusly is your steak made more digestible through mastication. I’m trying to focus on the part about becoming pain free. (Shit, they’re going to want money for the copay for the three-teeth-extraction extravaganza. That’s going to be a problem. Shit. Now I shall get to work on this!)

But it’s snowing vigorously, and it’s going to continue doing so all day, and it’s beautiful! And it’s my day off, and it’s my anniversary, and soon I won’t have any more dental pain, and a less hockey-inspired smile.

Quit being a ding-dong, please and thank you.

I must go. That's all I have to say to you.