June 6, 2020
Saturday
Impact of the New Normal: So, sheltering at home for us means both Liz and me working from home and that means we are together in the same house every day. She is busy in her office (daughter #2's room) and I stick pretty much to my home office (daughter #1's old bedroom). We've been "staying safe at home" since the end of March and adjusting to the requirements of living with the Coronavirus in general and my "at risk" requirement specifically.
This is the first month after closing down my physical office near downtown, since it was too small and poorly ventilated to guarantee social distancing, de-germifying between counseling sessions, and maintaining the requirements of my high-risk designation. In addition, most of the licensed psychotherapists seem to be moving in the direction of offering only online counseling during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Changing my whole daily routine at this point of my life as a "senior" (old fart) is not as simple and fluid as one might imagine. I talk to men who are retiring or close to it and find that there is a certain anxiety about shifting gears, letting go of authority, becoming less important, and re-ordering priorities. When medical conditions are involved it some-times adds "fuzzyness" (sometimes medicinally induced) and/or a hesitancy to accept the reality of the changes. I remember my mother's complaint when my father finally retired from his post-career military career: "He waltzes in here with nothing to do, thinking now he'll take on my household as a project and tell me how to run this place!"
I digress. Back to our own 2020 cultural phenomena of adjusting to the new normal of living in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic. The important point I am attempting to make is that being forced into a new reality that keeps us from having meaningful connections with friends, family, and people at large at a time of national crisis (COVID-19 + disorganized government measures to contain the virus + shutting down business to interrupt the spread of the virus + record unemployment + protests following police brutality... its too much for many to bear while quarantined.
According to David Kessler, "We are all dealing with the collective loss of the world we knew. ...The world we knew is now gone forever." (See: Hepola, S. (June, 2020). The gospel of Brené. Texas Monthly, p. 102.
I was safe at home through much of the above. Then on March 18th we had a follow-up appointment with Dr. Wells, who seemed to suggest that my labs and recent ultrasound were okay (the two other visits away from our house) and she wanted an MRI to investigate a "little something" she spotted behind some other part of my innards that ultrasound couldn't pick up clearly. She scheduled the MRI for May 20th and I went back into a cavernous waiting room with nervous people behind medical masks covering all but their darting eyes: sitting far apart; disinfecting wipes in each hand while gripping slippery pens to complete the alcohol wetted paper forms. Fortunately the wait was not long and I was soon cocooned in an MRI tube happily being non-claustrophobic. The tech did her work and I got out of there as soon as I could. ARA had the results sent back to Dr. Wells and put on the ARA Portal the next day. I didn't get around to looking at them until May 28th. Part of me kept putting it off and part of me was swamped with lots of other trivial minutiae that seems to float by when you are "Staying Home & Staying Safe".
So I finally reviewed the report on the 28th and immediately decided I wanted to digest it myself before sharing with my very busy partner, who, herself was awash with details that week. Upon reviewing and jotting down some questions, like "Why are the words 'Definitely heptocellular carcinoma' written in MY report?", and "How soon can I get in to see Dr. Wells for an explanation of this report?" I dashed off an email to Dr. Wells through the Portal... and by the next morning Emily, the administrative assistant, called me and explained that I had read the report incorrectly: that the "definitely" is one of a number of options and NOT the one representing MY results. Whew! (Personal revelation: I always prefer to accept the positive misunderstanding than the negative one)
According to Emily, Dr. Wells is not overly concerned with the findings because the only thing we can do at present is to "...do another MRI in about 4 to 6 months to see if the T2 hypointense lesion has changed: previously it was .9 cm and now it is 1.3 cm". My response: post Liz's reframe... "Oh. okay."
There may be nothing Dr. Wells and Emily can do and yet that gives me a slightly worrisome feeling about my medical status... kind of like living in the midst of the amorphous COVID-19 pandemic. As Billy Pilgrim would say, "So it goes"
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