Protecting ourselves from germs in the time of the coronavirus
pandemic
My brother-in-law gets the award in our family to be “a germophobe
before it was cool”. I won’t steal that title from him. I am only his late-adoption
second follower. Nowadays, the whole world’s gone apey with buying
disinfectants!
The truth of it is, for me, until I had my open-heart
surgery, I thought all the precautions were a bit exaggerated. And then, about
four years ago, they opened my chest. And cut open my heart. And after all that
was over they told me that I had no immunity for a while, because my body was
busy creating white cells to heal my stitched-up heart and not creating white cells
to protect me from infections. Infections which, in turn, could muck up (that
is a very correct, strictly medical term) my newly inserted artificial aortic
valve and my artificial aorta and cause me to get endocarditis (heart
infection). In which case, I’d have the surgery all over again to redo the
transplant. That is, if I were lucky enough to catch that before it would kill
me.
I guess what used to be somewhat of a slur word has now
become ennobling. Today, we’re all trying to protect ourselves and (hopefully)
everyone else around us from spreading the coronavirus, so we all take pretty
much the same precautions I have been taking for four years now. Because what
we hear is that the number one thing we can do ourselves is to
stay clean, kill the virus by repeated cleaning, and not spread it, if we do
get it, by staying put. Some of these things I have now done since my surgery
four years ago.
Some of the things I have always done:
·
I never put my silverware in a restaurant on the
table. I wipe them (sometimes with hand sanitizer) and put them on a clean
napkin (inside of the napkin out). Of course, we don’t worry about this right
now, since we can’t eat out.
·
I never put my menu on my plates (again, now it’s
not helpful, but keep in mind for when we get set free again).
·
I always have at least two small bottles of hand
sanitizer with me. I sanitize my hands before I eat in restaurants (even after
washing my hands in the same restaurant), after shopping anywhere, after using
my credit card, or filling up my gas tank.
·
I try hard not to touch my face until I get home
to properly wash my hands with very hot water and lots of soap. I scratch my
nose and face with my elbow or my shoulder.
·
When I travel by plane, I travel with Lysol
wipes and I disinfect everything around me that I touch: the armrests of my
chair, my seat-belt, the table in front of me, the vent above my head, the
light switches.
·
I never wear the clothes I wear on planes and
airports the day after until after I have washed them again.
·
I never unpack my suitcase and I never touch
anything in a hotel room until I wipe down all the hard surfaces, all the light
switches, door knobs, bathroom fixtures, toilet, etc …
·
The first thing I do in a hotel room is remove
the bed spread. That is infectious! Not traveling now, but this is my usual
routine.
·
We (my husband and I both) wipe the handles of
carts in grocery stores, even before the pandemic.
·
I have hand sanitizer not only in my purse, but
also in my car and my husband’s car, as well as my travel pack and my carry-on
pack.
·
I never go to pools or public hot tubs anymore. Not
even to dip my toes!
·
Even before my surgery, I would never use the
tubs in hotels, but now, I wear beach flip-flops in the shower of the hotels, for
my feet not to touch the public tiles in the bathroom.
During this pandemic, I stepped it up a notch to also:
·
Disinfect the outside of boxes and bags that
come from the grocery store with Lysol or alcohol.
·
Throw away (recycle) any plastic bags that I bring
home.
·
Wear a mask when I go to the hospital for
appointments. No, I am not making them unavailable to the medical staff, these
are masks I had had for years. During flu season, for four years now, if I have
had appointments, especially in a hospital, I have worn the masks. In January,
before we knew about the coronavirus, I had an appointment for an MRI. I wore a
mask because it was wintertime and I was going to be in a huge hospital where
they see thousands of patients a day, either admitted there or from the ER. You
just never know. Now, during the pandemic, I wear the mask even when I go to a
clinic. I know they said masks won’t help you unless you’re sick, but I can’t
help but think that someone who is already sick like a doctor or a nurse who
sneezes around me can infect the air which I am breathing in, so I feel like a
mask guards me against that polluted air.
·
Both my husband and I try very hard to respect
the guidelines of social distancing nowadays, too. We had a neighborhood party
where our neighbors placed lawn chairs in a circle in a cul-de-sac on our
street, 6 feet apart from one another. They brought their own drinks and they
had a “social distancing neighborhood party”. But I didn’t feel safe enough to
go to it. They also brought a table where people could share
finger foods. I guess we’re still new to
this germaphobia thing and this social distancing, but sharing your cooking
with the neighbors is not, in fact, distancing much …
·
We go to the grocery store 2-3 times a week (we
try less but they keep running out of things we need so we end up going several
times till we find everything we need).
·
We order out from a couple of restaurants a week.
·
Outside of this, we stay put or walk by ourselves
a lot.
And that reminds me: I always have appointments. Whether
they are specialists’ appointments, or primary care visits, or lab tests, I
have one at the very least once a month. This month, I was scheduled for a
physical but my cardiologist emailed me to tell me not to go to it. He said the
risk of exposure to the virus will be higher than the risk of skipping a
routine physical, unless I had serious concerns that I had to clarify with my
regular doctor. Which I didn’t. Funny thing was: the next day my regular doctor
called to cancel it with pretty much the same reason: routine visits will stop
so the staff can be available for the increase demand of possible flu patients.
As a heart patient, I am considered to be someone with a higher
risk of mortality and increased severity if I contract this virus. I am trying
to continue my “normal” protected routine as I am adding new guidelines
to my caution. I am not panicking and I am not bored yet. There is so much to do
in this house, so many projects and things I have always wanted and needed to
do that I never had the time for. Time is all I have now – a luxury that might
not come around often!
Also, I am not judging but I am shocked that so many people
must not have had cleaning products, alcohol, soap and other cleaning supplies
in their houses already – because obviously they all needed to get them now?! Or
maybe they never got them before and they don’t know that you don’t need to get
10 bottles of Lysol. One will do for a couple of weeks. Or, geez, how long has
it been since you really cleaned your house, people?! We were lucky
to have most of these products already, but our supplies are dwindling now and
the stores are still empty for the most part. Hopefully, people are stocked up
for a while and the bounty of what was once overflowing American bounty will
return.
Stay clean. Stay safe. Stay distanced. Keep warm hearts,
everyone! Let’s see each other on the other side of this, with lots of good stories
to tell!
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