Opening up the state? Should or shouldn't we?

 

First off I will tell you, I am not a doctor, I do not know what the right answer is. I am also not an economist, fact is, I hate math. So, I really don't know what to do about the economy. But, I do want to share my perspective and the perspective of some of my transplant friends. I hear a lot about how there are not that many new cases and we should start opening up the economy, even if it is little by little. That we should let the healthy people who can go back to work, go back to work and the elderly and immunocompromised stay home. Many people do agree that this school year has to be over. Kids cannot be back in school. Kids are not sanitary and they are in large groups, they will bring diseases, any diseases whether COVID or other diseases, back to their family and it will spread and overwhelm our healthcare system again. Right now, Illinois still is getting new cases of Covid every day. Today, April 18, 2020, In Illinois 125 people lost their life from Covid bringing the total deaths to 1,259 since the start. We also had 1.585 new cases today, bringing our total cases to 29,160. So, we have not bent the curve enough to feel  safe going back to normal. I don't know if, I personally, will ever feel safe going back to normal. I do know we can not sustain this way of life forever, obviously. I have family that is hurting financially from this too, so I get where others are coming from when they say "we need to open everything back up. We need to make money." People are scared. People need to know when their next paycheck will be, or if they can file for unemployment? Or how they will pay for rent, medications, food, electricity. I get it, I truly do! We are starting to worry about how we will pay for a few of those things as well. Again, that is why I say I do not know what the answer is.

Because you see, I have seen my son on a ventilator. I am not sure if you have ever seen a child on a ventilator, but it is not fun. Even less fun when it is your 1 month old baby. Have you ever seen nurses fix tons of lines of medicine for your child? They are truly miracle workers. I get stressed trying to untangle my headphones. Ben had tons of lines of medicine as you can see in the pictures above. I don't know how a *healthy* child would deal with covid in the hospital, I do know that with Ben, he is on a few medications that, if he was sedated and vented, would have to be given somehow, I am guessing through IV. There are some myths going around about children and covid. You CAN in fact be there with your child if they are hospitalized. Children are not allowed to make decisions for themselves, so a parent does have to be present, BUT, it will only be one parent, and that parent is the only one that stays. The whole time. Are you prepared to stay with your child if they are hospitalized and ventilated? I was able to get breaks and switch off with my husband. And as you can see above, Ben's sisters got to visit him for Christmas, as long as they wore masks. In this situation, I don't think they would be seeing him if he was hospitalized. Children are not allowed in the hospitals at all anymore to visit patients. There are very strict rules right now. Can you imagine being away from your other children for that long? What if you were the one to get sick because we decided to open everything up and "liberate Illinois"? I don't mean to scare everyone, but this virus is unknown. We don't have a vaccine for it. We don't have an antiviral for it. All we have is supportive care. And hope. Hope that the person that gets it will get better. If you are healthy, you may be able to fight it off. Some healthy people aren't even that lucky. Even healthy people are dying. If you are unhealthy, it's even harder to fight it off. You may end up in the ICU fighting for your life. There have been posts about doctors using their own cell phones to call a patients loved one for them to talk to for the last time, because they are alone in the hospital.

Let's also talk about healthcare workers for a minute. Everyone wants to open up the cities, and I get it, I truly do. I want to go back to seeing my babies I work with. I miss seeing them in person. I miss interacting with them. I miss helping the parents in a more meaningful way. But, healthcare workers are already being overwhelmed because they don't have the personal protective equipment that they need (PPE) for the sick people going in. No, this isn't a lie to get the federal government to give them more. They really are running that low because of all the panic buyers buying  them, or all the people that bought them up and sold them at a much higher price. If we open everything up right away, and then people start getting sick from being too close to others, we all severely overwhelm our healthcare workers, getting them sick in the process, and then who will take care of us? Who will take care of the medically fragile, the ones who really need healthcare assistance during this time?

We had a scare yesterday and one of our friends had a scare the day before. Our friends son had a fever, lethargy and some cold symptoms. They were sent to Lurie Children's hospital for monitoring, because it could possibly be covid, and since he was a transplant kid, we do not take this lightly. Yesterday, Ben woke up with a fever of 102 and diarrhea. After calling the cardiology team they decided that it didn't SOUND like covid, but since diarrhea *can* be a symptom they wanted labs done and for him to be seen by his pediatrician and to call if he got any worse and they would have him seen at Lurie ER. It turns out, he likely has a GI virus, and our friends son (thankfully!) does not have covid either!

This is where we are now. Anytime we go out, we change out of our clothes, take a shower, wipe down everything we had touched and change in to new clothes. We wear masks to go in to the doctor offices we wipe everything down in our house, instant mopping, wiping down groceries, just in case.

So, when people say we need to just open up the cities and states, and those that are healthy can work and those that are elderly or immunocompromised can stay home, believe me, I understand that we want to get things back to normal and people want to earn money. But what I hear is, "us healthy people need money even if it means everyone else gets sick and transfers it to your child." Which makes me sad. Our team has always told me, "we didn't give him this transplant for him to live in a bubble, we gave him this transplant for him to live his life." But, if everyone else can't obey social distancing rules (which from what I have seen in some cities, some people can't) then it makes it harder to open up the cities safely and the virus just keeps traveling from person to person getting everyone sick, and in turn getting our most vulnerable sick. And when it comes down to it, my worst fear is that because transplant kids (and adults) have preexisting conditions, they will be the last ones to get a ventilator because "someone healthy has a better chance of living, so they need it more."

So, do I want the cities to open back up? Right now, no. Even with my kids driving me crazy at home. I would rather them drive me crazy at home and still be alive. Do I want us shut down forever? Of course not! There has got to be some middle ground though. Some way where we can make sure that as we open everything up, people are being reasonable. The reason the state and city parks were shut down was because even after the governor said "I am expecting everyone to take reasonable precautions and not gather in groups," people treated this like summer break and gathered in huge groups at parks. We saw it as we would drive by. We would see people playing football at the park, soccer, running around and wrestling. So, he had to actually make it a RULE to shut those down. So, I would like to see some rules in place before everything opens up, and if the rules aren't listed too, it gets shut down again.

I'll end with this quote, attributed to many, "Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins." In general it conveys the principle that your right to exercise whatever “liberty” you think you’re entitled to ends when that liberty threatens my (or others) life and safety. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/16/1937928/-Dear-right-wing-protesters-your-liberty-to-swing-your-fist-ends-just-where-my-nose-begins