My Alyssa texted me this morning, she was so worried. She has a low grade fever and sore throat. Of course everyone’s mind goes to thoughts of COVID. She is in the city with her boyfriend Sam, she left here yesterday evening. So she took herself to urgent care, found out her COVID antibody test she had blood taken for a couple of days ago is negative, however the strep test is positive. I’m glad it’s strep and not the corona virus. If she did have the corona virus it would be totally ironic as Alyssa is taking the quarantine totally seriously. She rarely goes out, and if she does it’s only grocery shopping, always wears a mask when going out and then only person she sees outside of us is her boyfriend and I know he’s working from home and taking the quarantine seriously.
Alyssa has discovered gardening and the love of houseplants while in quarantine. I have this pretty big sized Christmas cactus that I grew from and off shoot of my mom’s plant about 20 years ago. This plant has survived and at times thrived through times of attention and nurturing and through times of neglect and crazy life situations. I had been giving it attention and so had Alyssa and the plant is thriving once more. It even grew new off shoots and bloomed a flower, go figure. Alyssa also grew two small plants from lemon seeds. Ordinary old lemon seeds from a lemon, from Shoprite. It’s totally cool! I’m looking forward to them becoming bigger plants and then small trees. Alyssa read up on this and it seems the plant won’t grow actual lemons for 3 years. But that’s ok; three years will pass whether she grows the plant or not. So all is well.
I totally miss work. I miss my routine and the students I take care of. I’ve called the parents last week and I was so glad that they haven’t been sick with the corona virus. There are a few students who are quite medically fragile so I was really relieved to get that news. As for me as a nurse right now; I’m waiting for the city to figure out what to do with many of us. Last week I was told to report to East Harlem, spent 2 days there to be told the facility didn’t have assignments for us (about 7 DOE nurses). I’m not complaining about working from home and calling parents and taking care of my own family, but the anxiety of not knowing where you will be told to report to next can be overwhelming. On the upside, in going to East Harlem, I became friendly with 2 nurses and I’m so glad we struck up a friendship. We’re in a group text and we share any information we learn from other nurses concerning our situation.
I realize school has been closed until at least September, but the area I work at; district 75 which is special education is a 12 month program. From what I understand the summer program hasn’t been decided yet. I want to go back to work at my school, but I want it to be safe for everyone. I feel like that is a tightrope our elected officials are walking on and there is no easy answer.
Menay O; mom to 4, Christian and thrift shopper on the side... 