I have two things bothering me so much I can’t think about anything else right now. I don’t mean that literally. I am also thinking about the snack-cake I am going to eat after lunch or possibly mid-morning, and I am thinking about what I will have for lunch, and I am thinking about various chores I want to get done today, and I am thinking about taking a walk, and I am thinking about sending some postcards. But when I try to think about writing a post, I am thinking about only the two things. But I don’t want to write at length about either one of them, so I will just say them briefly:
1. At Edward’s infusion yesterday, they put us in a double room. That is, we were in a hospital room for 3.5 hours with another patient/parent. Last time we were there, the policy was one patient per room per DAY, with intensive cleaning each night, and I did not know the policy had changed. And the hospital’s overall policy is still that adult patients may not have anyone with them, and children may have only one accompanying adult, so I don’t see how that works with putting two patients and two adults in one room together. The nurse said not to worry about it, because we were all wearing masks and we could be 6 feet apart. I know I am not a medical expert, but what I have been seeing from actual medical experts makes me think this was not at all a safe idea, and that “6 feet apart” does not apply when you’re sharing the same room’s worth of air for hours. Also, the other patient/parent kept taking their masks off to eat snacks or have a drink of water, and then putting the masks back on. Again, I am not a medical expert, but my impression is if you take off your mask, the mask is no longer working. I felt trapped and panicky, and powerless to do anything: they didn’t HAVE more rooms, so I couldn’t ask to be moved.
2. At our old house, we had a maple tree my parents bought for us when Henry was born; when he was younger, we took his photo with the tree each year on his birthday. Coincidentally, the property across the street put in several of the same type/age tree at about the same distance from the street, which made our whole end of the street prettier and more coordinated. Also, before we got the tree, the living room was almost impossible to keep reasonably cool in the summer; the tree helped hugely with this. When we moved, we thought about transplanting the tree to the new house for sentimental reasons, but (1) we didn’t want to do that to the old property/neighborhood/livingroom and (2) when we looked into it, we saw there was a fair risk the tree wouldn’t survive, and we didn’t want to move it and end up killing it. Anyway, I drove by the old house a few days ago and saw that the new owner had cut down the tree.
Oh no! I’m always sad when trees get cut down. I would not be happy about the hospital room situation either.😒
Oh dear. I would be obsessed with these two things as well. I cannot believe the hospital would do that! These are patients who are BOTH immunocompromised, yes? Completely unacceptable.
The tree. That must have been a punch in the gut when you saw it. Yes, the new owners have the right to do that, but…ugh.
When our daughter was born, we planted a flowering tree at our house. We moved away a few years later, but every time we drove through the neighborhood, it was comforting to see “her” tree growing and blooming. (Even if they didn’t prune it properly, hmmmm.)
I’m sorry you have to have this extra stress on top of everything else.
Am in complete solidarity with rage and the commensurate brain space used.
This is what I feel, said better than I would have.
YEP.
1. immunocompromised patients, 2 of them, plus their adults, in one room, for hours: NO. Absolutely not. Hospitals have no excuse for not knowing this.
2. tree being gone: yes, it’s totally within their rights, and maybe there had been a lightning strike or a tree branch failure or something such that the tree had to be chopped down, but NOOOO. A different kind of visceral sad-NO rather than a sharp-angry-NO.
Both suck. Definitely call the hospital before next round to find out what their current protocol is and request a separate room if the hours-together-in-rooms-with-random-people nonsense is still going on.
Ugh to both of these things.
I would be SO pissed about the tree.
Both of those things totally suck and I can see why you couldn’t get them out of your head.
If it makes you feel better, taking the masks off only renders them useless for the time they’re off if they’re being used to stop the mask wearer from spreading the virus (as opposed to being used to stop the wearer from catching the virus). Their chief purpose in that case is to catch any droplets that are breathed out so they can’t float around the room. When the mask is put back on, it catches the droplets again. So as long as you don’t touch what they touched and sanitized/washed your hands, the actual viral load they could have breathed into the air is still very small unless they were sneezing, coughing, shouting, singing, etc. while they actually had the mask off.
Yes! Taking it on and off makes it ineffective in that the person is touching the mask and thus transferring any contaminants on the mask onto their fingers, then their snacks, mouth, etc. So, sucks for them if their mask was contaminated, but it won’t make it any less effective from preventing them from spreading to YOU once they put it back on.
Oh no – they cut down the tree. :( That is so terribly sad and of course it would be stuck in your mind. I’m sorry.
The hospital room thing, too, would just make me so anxious and hand wringy and of course there was nothing to be done short of leaving and THAT wasn’t really an option. Ugh. I’m sorry.
My grandparents had raspberry bushes next to their house and one of my best memories of them is picking those raspberries and pigging out on them. The new owners removed the bushes when the house was sold after my grandparents died I am still mad 38 years later
I’m so sorry about the tree. That would haunt me, too.
The hospital thing would get me enraged. You’ve been so careful to SPECIFICALLY not endanger Edward, and then the folks you’re trusting to help him are going LALALA HERE WE GO ALL IS FINE DON’T WORRY and going against the precautions they had in place last time.
Re: the tree. The thing that often helps me in these situations, is I think about the alternate universe in which I decided to move the tree and it died, and how that version of me would be haunted, and how they might feel better knowing that NOT moving the tree also resulted in the tree not making it. But it’s still a loss.
Oh, this is a good Coping Thought. I have also been using thoughts like “Maybe the tree was hit by a truck or suffered some other catastrophe and THAT’S what actually killed it,” or “Maybe the tree had some sort of fatal disease and THAT’S why it was cut down.”
Alternatively, although less kindly, one might hope that they shortsightedly cut the tree down thinking “it makes things so dark” but when summer comes they will pay the price for the lack of shade in the living room and regret their decision every day.
I am obviously a petty person because this was my first thought: well I hope they are hot AF in the summer if they just cut that lovely tree down for no reason. I’m not proud that this was my first thought, but here we are.
Those are good coping thoughts. XOXOX
This was going to be my comment too – there was a beautiful dogwood in our front yard when we moved in, and I loved it! ….but we did some landscaping work near it, and apparently their roots are notoriously shallow and fragile, and even though we used professionals to do the work, it was enough to upset the dogwood and it went from gorgeous last spring to 100% dead this spring. I hated that we had to cut it down but it wasn’t a choice so much as a requirement. But if you only drove by a few times a year, it would totally seem like we just opted to get rid of it.
You’re so right on both counts. My blood pressure is actually climbing in sympathy on the hospital situation. Grrr! Ooh, I could curse, I could. What is wrong with people??
That last sentence was a gut-punch. I love Liz’s take on it, though. That is very comforting, indeed. At least in this scenario, you know it wasn’t your fault the tree was cut down; if you’d moved it and it died, it would be much more of a direct personal burden to bear.
For the hospital- I encourage you to be more aggressive next time. I have dealt with hospitals putting elderly relatives in dangerous situations and going through painful / unnecessary things. I let my bitch flag fly. I say no. Repeatedly, politely, but I become an unmovable barrier. I don’t worry about being the difficult person. I say “This is unacceptable. I know that you (nurse) are doing what you have been told, but this is not acceptable. So I need you to let me speak with whomever I need to. If you need to make a note that we are refusing [thing, medical intervention] you can.” Keep repeating until desired effect is obtained. And keep saying these magic words to them “My job is to advocate for them and their best interest.” Example: my dying grandfather who was being transferred to hospice. They kept taking his blood pressure every 2 hours. It was painful to him. When I found out, I politely blocked the LPN from getting to him and said “There won’t be any more blood pressure readings. I know you are following a doctor’s order, so you can report that we are refusing that order.”
I have found that in medical settings there’s a lot of hand waiving toward “rules” that aren’t really rules. They rely on you being conditioned to accept that they are the experts (which they are) to keep you cooperative. Yes it makes their jobs more difficult for the day. But I remain polite, calm, don’t yell or anything, and just refuse to be budged.
I am going to try to remember this for the next time I need it! Thank you!
I COMPLETELY agree with this. There are so many situations that, when refused, the hospital staff just shrug their shoulders about and find a way to get you what you need. I think it was reasonable to do what you did, which is stay in the room anyway, but for next infusion I would certainly insist and become a polite broken record just like MommyAttorney said. That just seems so stupid that they would put people in shared rooms for this kind of patient and especially in this kind of situation.
That hospital situation seems irresponsible. I hope that Edward stays healthy.
The tree – that would burn me up. The people that bought our house across town cut down the tree in the front yard (we did not even plant I and I still felt it was important to us). I assume it is because of the messy berries that it dropped (dogwood? Not up on my tree species). Those berries made the driveway and front walkway a mess. Sorry they did that, but I do think they will miss it when they struggle to cool the house in the summer, and I am glad you aren’t responsible for the tree’s demise.
I am SO SORRY about the tree. A while back we lived in Florida in a home that had been built in the 1960s. We had a HUGE, like 50-60 feet tall, oak tree in the backyard that shaded the whole back of the house and kept it cooler, and Hurricane Charley picked that tree up by the roots and laid it on its side. We had to hire a crane to come out and LIFT THE TREE OVER THE HOUSE (which was one of the most unnerving things I’ve ever witnessed) and we were left with a hole in the yard big enough for a small pool.
A few months later I was at a business filling out a form and when the guy saw my address he said, “Hey, my grandparents built that house! We drove by a while back and we were so sad you cut down the tree in the back yard.” I told him how it had come up in the hurricane and how sad we were about it, also.
Anyway, all this to say: maybe it was unavoidable and they were sad about it, too. Or maybe they’re like the horrible people that bought my parents’ house and cut down literally the only shade tree in the entire yard because they wanted a garage. Either way, it’s okay to be really sad about it. I still miss that oak tree.
I’m so sorry about the tree :(
I found this essay to be particularly reassuring/informative/even a little calming in some way? So I’ll just leave it here in hopes it has the same effect for you:
https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them/
Perhaps you could plant a tree at your current home in honor of the passing of the old tree?
I agree that you should entertain the idea that the tree removal was necessary. It’s still sad, but not as sad. Within a few years of living in our current home, we had to remove some landscaping that was infested with nasty little spiders and one of a line of beautiful maple trees. The tree looked fine, but was actually half dead and had a huge ant colony living inside that kept getting into our house. Truthfully the landscaping was ugly, but we felt really sad about the tree. If the previous occupants, who grew up in this house as my kids are now doing, drove by, I hope they wouldn’t think we just took that tree out for no good reason.
I have have long told my husband that if/when we leave this house I have to leave the town. I won’t be able to stand that type of thing.
Did the hospital take everyone’s temperature?
They took the patients’ temperature, which they do routinely anyway, but not the temperatures of the accompanying adults.
Oh, I am sad about the tree. I agree there may be good reasons and certainly the new owners were within their rights, but still.
As for the hospital room I am entirely outraged on your behalf. Good heavens. Honestly, if we cannot trust hospitals to get it right (and to be clear here, by “get it right” I mean “demonstrate an abundance of caution,” not that I am imagining that you & Edward are doomed, because I do believe the actual additional risk was probably low, but still!), who can we trust? This only adds to my commitment not to go out in public at all ever again (which of course is imperfect, I am actually having to go out some and even, yes, choosing to go out some, but things like this diminish my willingness. A lot.).
Besides what @MommyAttorney said (which is correct, I think, but of course — retrospective at this point), I absolutely think you should let the hospital you will not be bringing Edward back if they cannot guarantee a private room that has been thoroughly sterilized between patients. Good grief.
Re: the tree. We recently had a similar-ish landscaping tragedy. One thing that struck me was how similar how the emotional journey was to other kinds of loss/grief. It was less painful than, say, losing a beloved pet, but the same pattern of an initial onslaught of pain, same leveling off later on so we can recall happy memories with just that tinge of sadness at the end.
Anyway, just wanted to share because I think it would have helped me when the pain first struck to know it was going to follow that familiar arc. It’s okay to feel hurt by the death of a special tree. And it will get better.
Maybe plant something special with the kids at the new house now? So that later you can have a more positive story about continuity?
Not to get too crazy here, but if your son or you does get sick, you may have legal recourse with the hospital (negligence etc). Let us hope it does not come anywhere near to that.
Whew yeah the hospital room situation would have made me really really anxious. Last weekend for reasons we had to park our car someplace that had a meter. Well, where we live meters aren’t by every car, there is one per block for all of the cars parking there. Everyone was being very polite and waiting 6 feet away or in their cars then when it was H’s turn some yahoo pulled up right in front of the parking meter and jumped out like two feet from H without a mask. H immediately stepped away and watching the scene from my car made me really tense. In short: I would have been very anxious being in a room with two random people for 3.5 hours. The hospital really REALLY should be doing better.
I just read this executive summary of studies into children and covid and thought you might find the following reassuring: “ A case series of 9 children with inflammatory bowel disease on immunosuppression all suffered a mild course”
https://dontforgetthebubbles.com/evidence-summary-paediatric-covid-19-literature/ (website sounds dodgy but it’s reputable and done in conjunction with UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
My mom’s insurance started having her get the remicade infusions at home from a visiting nurse a couple years ago. I guess that was cheaper than them paying for visits to the infusion center. At first we wondered what would happen if she had a reaction or something but it has been fine. And now we’re really happy she’s not having to go out. The nurse seems to be taking as many precautions as possible.
Those both sound like perfect examples of everything that is so sad and stupid in this world. I went through the Wendy’s drive through today to get my daughters kids meals and every person I could see had their mask down around their mouth or their chin. What. Are. We. Doing. Is life only going to get worse forever?
I think it’s not unreasonable to assume the tree had to be removed. We had a large storm here two weeks ago and a GIANT (like 10 feet in diameter trunk) 100+ year old oak in our front yard came down. (Sad face.) In the process, it hit and seriously damaged another old, beautiful tree in our yard. Tons and tons of damage. Anyhow, I knew this would be SHOCKING to the prior owners (who still live in the area), so I actually texted to let them know we didn’t just cut down a beautiful old tree. But had I not met and actually known the prior owners, I wouldn’t have had a way to communicate that…and they’d probably just assume we hated the big old tree. (We loved it and are just so sad about it but thankful it didn’t do worse damage to our house.)
I literally gasped aloud when I got to your last sentence. How awful. :(
We had to remove two beautiful flowering cherry trees from our front yard because they were dying of some sort of blight. They were 25-30 years old and huge. People *stopped me on the street* to ask why we took them down–and commiserated when I told them. I think paying to remove trees I loved was the worst grown-up bill I’ve paid. I know the former owners who planted the trees, so I told them immediately before they drove by and had a shock.
My infusion on Monday was in the same open concept room where everyone can be together, except no visitors (I don’t know what their kid policy is). I hate it, and using the bathroom was so stressful. I wore a mask but I was the only patient wearing one.
I felt the cutting down of the tree like a sharp stab to the gut. I can’t imagine how crappy that felt to you, your tree, in person.