When the coronavirus began, we were told that masks were not necessary. Now, masks are mandatory in most enclosed places. The virus will dissipate when the weather gets warmer. We live in sunny Miami, and the virus came to visit us too. The best way to combat this virus is to build immunity, however, we must remain in quarantine. But I’ve always heard that we build immunity by coming in contact with the virus. The virus can live in surfaces for two hours... no, that’s wrong, it can live for four hours... no, that’s wrong too, it can live for six hours... Stay home. Go out as long as you stay six feet apart. You can go to the park, but not to the beach. Animals are not affected... except for tigers. Stay away from people over sixty because they are more sensitive to the virus. People over sixty can all go shopping together before 8 am because it’s fine if they are close to each other, they just need to stay away from people younger than 60. The virus began in China. No, not really, it began in a Princeton lab and was sent to China by Fedex.
I have been receiving so many contradictory messages that it has gotten to the point that I’m wearing my mask to cover my ears instead of my mouth. I don’t even want to look at the news anymore. In the morning I hear one thing, and at night, the message is totally different... in the same channel. I won’t even mention the different messages coming from different channels.
This week, I had my yearly physical. I considered cancelling it because I feel perfectly healthy, and I did not want to risk going to a doctor’s office. But after thinking about it, I decided to go more than anything else because I wanted to talk to my doctor. I respect my doctor tremendously. He is extremely smart. He went to Harvard for his undergrad and then went to UM Medical School. He reads a lot. He is in top of all the latest medical discoveries. A few years ago, I discovered by accident, literally, that I have a condition in my brain known as a “Chiari malformation” in which brain tissue extends into my spinal canal. Apparently, I’ve had this since birth, but I learned about it when I fractured my wrist. Since I also hit my head when I felt down, they did a CT scan of my head, and that is how this condition was discovered. I figured that since this was from birth and it’s never bothered me, I was not going to have the MRI that they recommended at the hospital. But when my doctor learned about this, he researched it and gave me more information than I ever cared to know about this “Chiari” condition. But that is who he is. He will give you all the facts whether you want them or not. Therefore, I was very interested in asking him what he had learned regarding Covid-19.
I spent half an hour with him, hardly talking about my health, but mostly drilling him with questions about the coronavirus. First of all, he is testing all his patients. Yes, I got tested too. It’s a long-term test that shows whether you’ve had the virus in recent months. By the time I went to see him, on his second week of testing, he had tested approximately one hundred patients. And all of them, including me, tested negative. Well, all except for his guinea pig. This patient had been in the hospital with coronavirus, so he tested him simply to ascertain that the test was working. And it was because this patient tested positive. He told me that he was surprised with all the negative results because if we go by the rumors out there, there are hundreds of people walking around that have contracted the virus and they don’t even know it. Obviously, this is not true, otherwise, at the very least, a few of his patients would have tested positive. He even tested himself, and he was pretty certain he would test positive since he had been in contact with patients who thought they had a cold, and it had turned out to be COVID-19. And yet, he tested negative.
I won’t go into details about our lengthy conversation, but I will just mention a few things that he told me that stayed with me. There is not enough knowledge yet about this virus to know the whole truth of how it is transmitted, and why it affects some people so badly and others not. He did say that he has noticed that people with low levels of vitamin D, across all age groups, get affected worst than those that have normal levels of vitamin D.
He also told me that in the thirty plus years that he has been a doctor, he has never seen anything like it. He has seen patients in the hospital whose lungs have been totally destroyed by this virus. And those that have survived tell him that they have never felt worst in their lives. He says that because of what he has seen, he will continue to quarantine himself and his family, even if restaurants and stores start to open up.
I must say that after I spoke with him, I felt a whole lot better. I have to confess that after Mother’s Day, I felt that maybe I was exaggerating this whole thing of staying away from my own kids and my mom. After seeing a lot of friends posting pictures on Facebook last Sunday, celebrating in their homes with their mothers and kids who do not live in the same house, I felt guilty. I shared this with a friend this week, and she felt exactly the same way. But after talking to my doctor, I realized that I have no reason to feel guilty for being cautious.
This week, our city will begin to reopen. And I can only hope and pray that my friends and family continue to be cautious. I hope that we won’t let down our guard because this is a very serious virus that has already claimed the lives of over 300,000 people worldwide. And yes, we could claim that this is just another flu, and that the flu also claims a lot of deaths, but I think that this would be like comparing apples to oranges. The Journal of the American Medical Association published on May 14th that in the U.S. there were 20 times more deaths per week from COVID-19 than from the flu in the deadliest week of an average influenza season. No other flu has caused this disruption in our entire world. We all have a certain responsibility to stop this thing from continuing to spread, and we can only do that through a certain amount of sacrifice.
Even though, at this time, we may still not be able to unmask the truth completely, there is one truth that is certain. We cannot allow our fear to turn into paranoia. Fear is normal. I don’t think we would be humans if we didn’t feel a certain amount of worry during these uncertain times. When the apostles were hiding in the upper room after Jesus was crucified, they were afraid too. But Jesus came to them and He calmed their fears. He will do the same for us if we allow Him. So if listening to all these contradictory messages is causing us to be afraid, then it’s best to stop listening to all this garbage and search for the truth from a source that we do trust.
We humans get stronger when we are put through the fire. And one day, we will be able to shake hands once again. We will be able to hug. We will not have to wear masks forever. And we will not need to wash our hands fifty times a day. And when that day comes, we will be better because we lived through this pandemic together, and we endured. In the meantime, let’s all stay calm, pray and take vitamin D.
Copyright © 2020 Christy Romero. All rights reserved.
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