Covid 2.0

 This is the third time Babygirl has had Covid.  In no case did she become Very Sick, although the first time it cost what little hope we had of rescuing the first transplant from disaster.

It's my second run.  Both times I've caught it from Babygirl after she went out with Curlygirl to do something somewhere.  Neither time, thankfully, did Curlygirl get it.  Her own Covid 1.0 is still wreaking havoc on her, almost 3 years down the line. 

Last time I was pretty sick and the recovery took forever, but I started symptoms on a Friday night (the family has a theme I think) and didn't call my doc for help until Monday. By then it was a bit too late to start an antiviral effectively, so the disease did what it does.

This time?

Well, to continue the WTD line from my experience with Ana's on call people?

I called my doc Tuesday in the morning. He is himself an entirely faithful sort who never leaves a message unanswered, so when it go to be pretty late in the afternoon, I put in a second call.  I was on hold for an atypically long time, about 20 minutes.  When someone picked up, I asked about my message status.  She found it and then asked,  "Who is your doctor?" I told her and she said, "He is not here." "Well, where is he?" Her answer was a polite but confusing, "How would I know?"

It turns out that he message was inadvertantly sent to another office 30 miles away from my doc.  And how did I end up talking to that distant office when I dialed MY doc's number?? We got disconnected during the call.  I double checked the number, which I had pulled from my contacts. It was correct, so, what....?

I called again and got an almost immediate answer at the correct office. Mystification all around, but hey, that's for IT to figure out and not my problem to call them. My doc is in office but leaving town SOON so she promised to get his nurse right away and have her call me. 

It turns out that Paxlovid doesn't like MY medications either, so I also got the Unicorn Drug.  Even though my pharmacy was open, I risked a higher co-payment by sending it to the pharmacy I knew had it.

I am blessed, truly, that I had no less than 4 people who asked if I needed them to go anywhere/get anything/do whatever.  I am MORE blessed that Curlygirl was feeling well enough to be one of them. She took a more than 20 mile round-trip journet from her home, to the phamacy to me.  The copayment, incidentally, was $0.

How am I feeling? Well, yesterday, I got up, made coffee and toast, consumed a little of each and took a nap from 8-10 AM.  I spent the rest of the entire day snoozing or watching stupid TV and was in bed asleep by 8 PM. It was an increase in activity from the day before.

Today I did the coffee/toast, picked up after myself and emptied the dishwasher, did a load of laundry and put on actual clothes. I walked Maisey less than half a mile with my lower abs (why?) screaming at me by the time we returned home.

I am pretty sure I'll be able to pay the bills, do another load of laundry and fill the dishwasher.  After that we'll see. 

Overall 2.0 is a much better experience than the first run. 

DeeDee

It's Always a Saturday.....

 When Citygirl was a toddler, ear infections were the thing for her.  Between germs from daycare, my walk-in and her dad's ER, she was a snot factory a great deal of the time. But ear infections always seemed to happen on a Saturday afternoon, or frequently in the late evening. Options for obtaining treatment were clearly limited, but to be fair the ER pre-covid was not typically as bad as it is now. 

Babygirl seems to have the same life plan.  The number of times that she has fallen ill on a weekend or a holiday is actually fairly astonishing.

Most recently she began with some cold symptoms Friday. The fever (which we ALWAYS have to do something about) began, of course, on Sunday.  

I had to run some errands, so I picked up a couple of packs of Covid tests.  She tested positive.

I put a call into the Transplant Team at 1:25 PM.  About 2:10 I called again, and was told that the "page just went out to the doctor a few minutes ago" and to give it more time.  I mean, what was the answering service doing for 45 minutes? I called a 3rd time at 3:05 PM.  The answering service was unable to determine if the doctor had actually received the page.  I mean, what the actual DUCK is going on here?

At 3:31 the doctor finally got back to me, since Babygirl was in bed asleep.  I told him that we had 2 basic problems:

1) Since she is acutely ill, should she keep her appointment in Rochester in the morning? I mean, nobody wants a Covid factory in a transplant center.

He gave the entirely sensible and why-didn't-I-think-of-it answer: Call them tomorrow and have them change it to virtual. Well, duh. I do that in my office all of the time!

2) Since her immune system is being deliberately trashed to keep the transplant alive, should she get an antiviral like Paxlovid?  The doctor waffled on that for a moment, checked he medication list and recommended Lagevrio instead, because it doesn't interfere with her medications.  "Good, good - could you send that to our pharmacy?"

Well, apparently although he knows what SHOULD be used he won't call it in because that's family practice's job, since they treat Covid regularly, and he himself has never written a prescription for it.

WHAT the ACTUAL DUCK. 

So I called our doctor at 3:41, knowing it was about a 30-1 chance that he'd be the on-call.  I knew that he'd phone it in, but an on-call doc who has never met her would either call it in or send us to the ED. We got the call at 4:01 PM.

It was not our doc, but the on-call guy took option 3.  "Why can't she have the Paxlovid?" I explained the drug interaction, and he said, "Let me do some research and call you back." 

Well, that's entirely sensible but not helpful for my level of anxiety in this moment. 

While I waited I called the 2 local 24 hour pharmacies to see if either of them had a supply of this Unicorn Drug. The farthest one had two full doses. It seemed safer than the closer one that only had one bottle. 

The oncall doc called back at 4:12 and told me that to use the Paxlovid "the math is just to complicated." Well, alrighty, then.  He did call in the Lagevrio, and we started it Sunday evening.

To add some extra flavor to all this: I took Monday off to go Rochester, but instead I called at 8 AM to reschedule her to video. It turns out the Monday appointment had been cancelled, and replaced with an appointment LAST THURSDAY which we obviously missed. 

She's scheduled for a video visit on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, at about 1 AM today somebody drove an icepick into my left ear and filled my left nostril with snot.  COVID test was positive this morning. I called family practice at 8:32 AM.  I am still, at 3:12 PM, awaiting an answer.  I'm doing the recall now. 

DeeDee