Friday

Our little Hannah — not feeling good last night but sweet as ever. 

Many cities and states are doing okay or even good in their fight against Covid. We are not. In fact our little city is listed in this NYT article below. I continue to choose to speak up even if it is uncomfortable. 

I have tried to explain to people what my husband is seeing ... and now my four children; myself, our long-time farm hand Jacob and our good friend Anni and her foster daughter all have Covid from John’s exposure. 

(Here’s irony for you: Anni quarantined for 14 days to spend Thanksgiving with us and then we gave HER Covid.)

(People have asked about our symptoms. Cough, exhaustion, eyes hurting, head pounding, lethargy, aches.) None of us have had a fever. The kids major complaints are their heads and eyes. The kids have only been bad for about 24-hours. Jacob snd John are both on the mend after about 3-4 days. I think I’m

Coming out of it but yesterday was hard. 

I wish I could share with you every single patient that John sees. The ones who tell him no one will take away their freedoms and they won’t wear a mask. The ones who leave AMA knowing they have COVID to go back into the community not caring. The ones who tell him they went to the store even though they knew they had it. Or the ones that get angry and threaten to spit on him or his nurses and GIVE them Covid. 

We are blessed beyond measure to be doing well and that the other people in our bubble did not get it. However in a few days, John will go back in to the ER to resume the fight as refrigerated trucks arrive for bodies and he sits on conference calls while home sick. 

A local friend Brittany, recently shared her experience with COVID. Young in her 20s school teacher. I share it below to give another example of what John keeps seeing. So many people choose to fight this virus privately. They don’t share their stories. And if they don’t, then the “this isn’t so bad” myth continues to circle .... 

Brittany’s story

It’s not too often I find myself caught “dead in my tracks,” but it’s now happened twice in a matter of days. This post isn’t meant to be political or offered for the purpose of debate, so please don’t make it such. 

Here were those events:

1. Greeneville, TN, made The NY Times because our Covid numbers have drastically risen over the course of the past 2 weeks. 

2. Mobile morgues (as in refrigerated trailers) have shown up to our local hospitals to accommodate the impending overflow of deaths in our region.

A month or two ago, this news would’ve caught me for a moment and I likely wouldn’t have thought too deeply about it..... but then I became one of the numbers. Several weeks ago, I tested positive for Covid-19. I chose to fight this virus as privately as possible, so I recognize this is news to some of you. This virus is real, and it is vicious. I have been sick with many things this year, but none could hold a candle to what this virus has done to me. 

I’m what all medical professionals would refer to as a “perfectly healthy young person” (outside of a couple busted knees and an allergy problem), and yet I had the symptoms more closely associated with those in the “at risk” category. Which leads me to say: this virus is not worth gambling with your life, because you have no guarantees for how your body is going to respond. My respiratory health will be viewed as “pre-Covid” and “post-Covid” for the rest of my life. I’ll likely be on an inhaler until I take my last breath. It may be a long time before I’m able to climb a mountain the way I’m accustomed to. But I also know I’m one of the truly fortunate ones. 

When I look at the severity of what’s going on around me, I praise God for the fact that I’m alive and didn’t find myself in the ICU or that my loved ones didn’t have to claim my body from a truck. I know this is probably being sent in to the abyss and no post or words will make anyone want to take this more or less seriously, but I just hope even one might look at this and realize we have to be careful, and even though we’re tired of Covid, it’s far from finished with us. I’m not telling anyone to live in fear, but I am pleading with you all to exercise caution and do your part to protect the people around you so those trailers don’t wind up full.