Fear

For many of us, I think the fear of this virus is actually the fear of making the wrong choice and getting sick. The ripple effect of not wearing a mask while grocery shopping or not washing your hands long enough after touching a door knob is what has many of us weighing every decision heavily. This fear and risk analysis for everyday life decisions is something that many people are facing for the first time, which might be why it is so heightened, but it is something our family has been operating at for a lot of Ruby's life. 

It started when she was born and the doctors instructed us to keep her about 6' from anyone who did not have a whooping cough vaccine for the first 6-9 months of her life. Then she was hospitalized for RSV and bronchiolitis just before her first birthday. And of course I've blogged many times about Ruby's cancer and what the treatment did to her immune system both during and since. 

Our family is familiar with the world being a 'risky' place. We definitely quarantined ourselves when we had to, when the risk was too great for Ruby. But we did our best to balance that with living that life we were trying to protect whenever possible. Ruby had six round of chemotherapy, each aiming to and resulting in bottoming out her white blood cell count (aka zero immune system). We were having blood draws several times a week to monitor those counts, and when they were low, we stayed indoors and sanitized everything. Masks, foam antibacterial and gloves were staples in our house. But once those counts climbed to a safer (notice I didn't say safe) level, we resumed some 'life' for the sake of our developing two-year old who was already having to miss out on so many things in her young life. And each time during those low counts, Ruby would run a fever, landing her a 3-5 night stay in the hospital. 

We have no way of knowing if she would have still spiked those fevers had we stayed in complete lock-down the entire time. We did all we could to minimize the risk of her getting sick, but she still did sometimes. And so did other kids we knew who were more strict with their lockdown. So which of us made the right choice? Who is to say...

After Ruby was done with treatment, her prevalence towards picking up all of the colds and illnesses continued. In fact, we just celebrated the first full year of Ruby's life that she's NOT had to be admitted to the hospital. Since Ruby was born we have always had to weigh the risks and benefits when it comes to decisions about school, activities, exposure...

I feel like I'm writing in circles now. I have three kids that make me question everything I ever thought I knew because of my 'fear' that I'm not making the right choices regarding their health, their upbringing, their schooling. Parental fear is real. And I don't have a great plan for how the schools should reopen, but I know there are many brilliant parents and teachers and administrators that DO have well-thought out ideas about how to make it happen. For our family, with our experiences, some type of in-person instruction and socialization is the right decision FOR NOW. (Even though we only have that option for one of the three kids.)

Somewhere along the way it feels as though we all shifted from 'flatten the curve' and 'minimize the risk' to 'avoid getting sick at all costs' and 'eliminate all risk'. As I've said before, I hope that we are remembering that the lives we are attempting to protect are full lives, not days that blend together, at best. The impacts on the best-case-home-scenario families are significant, but on the homes with less support, less stability, less funds, less domestic safety...what is happening to those families should be where our fear lies. I've heard from doctors and teachers in contact with some of those families, and the lack of in-person school has been devestating. I hope that we can find our way back to our schools in some capacity soon, a few hours a day, a few days a week, a few classes at a time...something to stop living in this current state of never-ending 'pause'.