Waiting For Superman: CV Stories, 15 April 2020

Frail, far-away parents, Aussies and four-year-old's birthday parties.

Starting this week, this newsletter will be publishing your quarantine and coronavirus stories every Wednesday. These are stories from you about how this is affecting you, your family, your friends … your daily life. No story is too small or too big. (The regular weekly newsletter will continue uninterrupted.) Email me your story at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.

This week: A daughter dealing with an ailing mother from afar, a postcard from Australia and a dad finding a way, any way, to get Spider-Man to a four-year-old’s birthday party during quarantine.

From Aileen Gallagher:

As I write this in Syracuse, N.Y., I await a phone call from a hospital in South Florida telling me what's going to happen to my mother today. On Tuesday, I got a frantic call from her neighbor, who found my mother — conscious but agitated and confused — on the floor of her condo. My mother is 80 and lives alone, and has become increasingly frail in the last six months. Her collapse was the result of an untreated infection that spawned a host of other problems. She tried to call the doctor but had trouble getting an appointment; she thought she could just hang on till the pandemic was over. She will recover from the immediate infection, but the episode will further debilitate her. She must have been so afraid.

It is always challenging to manage my mom's healthcare from afar. To do so amid this crisis increases the magnitude of difficulty and despair. The painful conversation in which my mom agreed it was time to move into assisted living happened over the phone, both of us crying in isolation. She will come to a nice place near me, but when and how we can get her here is unknown. If we cannot get her into a rehab center, my siblings will put themselves at risk by getting on a plane and staying with her until we can move her up here. We will do this as long as we have to, or as long as we can.

This COVID world is crushingly small, yet impossible to navigate. And I have absolutely no idea what will happen next.

From Miss D in Australia:

I'm writing this as everyone here in Australia is about to go on the Easter break.

My mother is in a nursing home that has been locked down for weeks, which means my family cannot see her at all. She is 88 and she has some dementia, so I'm not sure how much of this she is following – I'm probably more distressed about not seeing her than she is about not seeing me! Before they locked it down, I raced out to the nursing home from work to see her, and as I stood there saying goodbye, it felt like I was never going to see her again. I hope that's not true, but the uncertainty as to how long this will all go on means it could be true. For now, though: She’s pretty tired of my brother and I asking her four times a day: Do you have a fever? a cough? a sore throat? are you sure you're ok? are you sure you don't feel just a little bit ill?

We're being told we have succeeded in flattening the curve, which is fantastic – we hope we have avoided the apocalyptic public health emergency that so many countries have faced, but all the governments are nervous that if people don't stay focused on social distancing, we'll be back where we started. We have been under what are called Stage 3 restrictions for about three weeks – you can go out to shop, go to the doctor, exercise or take care of other people, but not for any other reason – and this is expected to continue for another month or so at least.

Australia has a total population of about 25 million. As of 14 April, we have around 6400 confirmed cases. 61 people have died, around 20 of whom were cruise ship passengers. Ninety percent of cases are people who returned from abroad or had contact with someone who returned from abroad. 227 people are in hospital, 79 of whom are in the ICU. We have done more than 350,000 tests across the country and we are trying to ramp that up with more drive-in style testing centres and quick results.

Is it OK to say we have been lucky when 61 people have died and many more are sick? Because looking at what has happened around the world, it is incomprehensible that so many people have died, that so many people have been sick, that this disease has ripped through countries and has not yet burned out.

So yes, I think it is OK to acknowledge that we have had some luck so far.

We are an island, so shutting our borders was feasible. Like the US we are a federation, but we only have six states and two territories, not 50. We have a conservative government with a prime minister who was a policy manager and tourism guru before he went into politics and I suspect thinks that you defeat COVID-19 by prayer … but he's been smart enough to get out of the way of the two most important and capable ministers in his Cabinet at the moment, the Health Minister (response to the disease) and the Treasurer (recovery package and stimulus). The states have differed on some things around the margins, but overall, they have been able to ask for what they needed and get it and do what needs to be done and have it approved and the management of COVID-19 has by and large been done collectively and cohesively.

So our luck has not been with the disease itself. It has been in having a political system with enough goodwill in it to formulate and implement a coordinated response. I didn't vote for – and would have never voted for - this conservative government (they are not my team) but that hasn't mattered much in the last few week. They've done an amazing job and I trust that “my” team, had they been in power, would have done an amazing job as well.

I can't think of one positive thing to say about your President, but you do have luck. Your luck is in Dr Fauci and his team, in governors like Larry Hogan, and in all the incredible kind, resourceful Americans who will navigate a way through this even if they have to do it themselves, like all the people who are giving money to food banks, or looking after their neighbours, or staying indoors.

Every day is one step closer to this being over, so please take care.

From Noah:

Last weekend we had my four-year-old son’s birthday party online. We had planned a big party, the first time we’ve ever made a big deal about one of our kids’ birthdays. We invited all of his cousins, some school friends and all of our close friends with kids. Then March rolled around and things started getting interesting. I work in New York City, and people starting talking about halting all business travel right around the end of February. My wife and I started having conversations about cancelling the party, but we just kept saying “we’ll see, we’ll see,” which we felt we had to do: Our 4 year old knew we were planning something fun and kept reminding us, “it’s going to be a Spider-Man party right?” My wife had even managed to track down a college student in a nearby town who dressed up as various superheroes for kids parties. We had sent him a deposit. Spider-Man was ready.

By about March 10 we knew an in-person party wasn’t happening. My wife and I were crushed. How would we explain to my son that his friends wouldn’t (couldn’t!) come to our house for his party? As a dad, I felt like I was disappointing my son on the very first birthday he would probably remember.

Spider-Man sent us an email on March 13 explaining his school was cancelling classes, and he returned the deposit. I immediately ordered the highest-quality Spider-Man costume I could find and prayed I would fit into the damn thing. My wife and I explained everything to our son about a week before his party, and we told everyone we’d celebrate via zoom. My amazing wife decorated our dining room and baked a cake, and at noon last Saturday my son’s friends, cousins, classmates and grandparents all joined us online. We sang happy birthday (twice), shared quarantine stories, and laughed a lot. My son loved every moment of it. He got to play with the computer! See his friends! Eat cake! Then at around 2 p.m., with our 20-month-year old napping and my wife and the birthday boy watching a movie on the couch, I sneasked upstairs and put on the costume. I came sliding into the living room, scaring my wife half to death and watching my son’s face light up with pure joy. “Daaaad! You’re funny!” Didn’t fool him for a second, but I’ve never seen him happier. They really are better than we are at handling our new circumstances. I am thankful that despite everything swirling around us, we get to go through this as a family.

Send your coronavirus stories to williamfleitch@yahoo.com.