I ended up officially going into quarantine on day 6 of the
21 day observation period, so I ended up remaining there for 15 days. For a little over two weeks, I could
only go as far as my front porch.
I was still in the building where most of the staff live, so I would see
normal life going on around me as people went to work, went out, went to the
beach. I just couldn’t really be a
part of it. Don’t get me wrong,
people came to visit me pretty often, but it still felt like life was pretty
much passing me by.
I know that some of you may be wondering whether I was
scared about whether or not I had Ebola or not, but that honestly very rarely
crossed my mind. I had to check my
temperature three times a day to make sure that I didn’t have a fever, but I
knew that my contact had been so minimal that it would be next to impossible
for me to positive.
As I think about the experience now, the most striking thing
was the endless monotony of it all.
People who know me well, know that I like to keep my schedule full. I love planning everything, to the detail,
in advance. If my calendar isn’t
full, I feel like I don’t have anything to look forward to and I start to get
bored. Well, for two full weeks I
didn’t look at my planner at all, because every day was the same. Some days I dealt with that alright and
some days I didn’t.
On good days, I’d get up around 7:30 or 8:00, make coffee,
and do work through the morning.
Then I’d usually eat lunch, take a shower, and work until the late
afternoon. At that point, I’d
usually pop in a quick nap, then make dinner and watch Netflix until I went to
bed. Unless someone was coming to
see me, in which case wine and chatting would be added to the Netflix portion
of the evening. On bad days, I
would bring my computer to bed and make sure I didn’t have any pressing emails,
then snooze/watch Netflix throughout the morning and maybe get a little work
done in the afternoon… followed by more Netflix at night. I managed to stay pretty positive
throughout, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it was a very long two
weeks.
Spending two weeks in such a confined space and seeing the
same things, day after day, I began to get joy from very small things. There was a particular mug in the
apartment that I used for my coffee every day. There was nothing particularly special about it, just a
normal coffee house kind of mug, but there was something about it that I
liked. Even though there were
probably 15 mugs in the kitchen, I would choose to wash out and reuse the same
one throughout the day. I became
absolutely uncompromising about my showers. Although we have pretty consistent hot water here, there are
days when either the water has run out in the tanks or there’s no electricity
to heat it. Usually, I would just
grit my teeth and deal with a cold bucket shower. But nope. Not
in quarantine. I would turn on my
water heater about an hour in advance, then I would spend some time picking out
music for my rock out shower. And
then I would have a rock out shower, singing along of course. I also learned to appreciate my front
porch. The view on the ground
floor is of course pathetic compared to the others, but there’s a beautiful
hibiscus plant in front of it. I
made it a point every day around sundown to sit outside for a while and just
sit.
I think perhaps the most surprising part of the experience
was the last night. Even though I
was going back to the same job and desk and office I’d spent way too many hours
in over the past two months, I found myself with the same jitters I’d had
before my first day. It felt like
it had been so long since I’d left the apartment that I was anxious about going
into work. I knew logically that
my anxiety was unfounded, but viscerally I just couldn’t shake it.
The 21 days between the day I found out my colleague was
positive for Ebola and the day I was released from quarantine are ones that I
don’t think I’ll ever forget… although a lot of them do blur together. My colleague passed away less than a
week after being diagnosed. A week
after that, his wife also passed away.
Although I didn’t get to work with him for very long, it still affected
me. In this kind of work, it’s
easy to think of yourself as isolated from the world around you. These things just don’t happen to us…
until they do.
I know that this has been some very heavy stuff, so I want
to end these chronicles with some of the my quarantine accomplishments:
1) Finally finished the book ‘Lonesome Dove’
2) Started watching the ‘Lonesome Dove’ miniseries, but then
gave up because it was too horrible
3) Finished all of the Law & Order: SVU available on
Netflix
4) Finished all of the Psych available on Netflix
5) Watched the latest season of Archer in one day
6) Bought a bottle of champagne to celebrate my release day
and drank it after 3 days
7) Cooked every day (not that I had a choice, exactly)
8) Showered (almost) every day
9) Remembered to take my malaria meds every day
10) Stayed sane (or at least as sane as I was when I
started)
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