Tag: Coronavirus

UPDATED! Pandemic Diary: March 8th, 2021: “Are You Out of Your Godforsaken Mind?!??”

Today is Day 358 since I began working in self-isolation from my apartment for my university library system. Next week, on March 16th, 2021, it will be an entire year that I have been operating this way.

I slept so poorly last night that I took another yet sick day from my paying job, and so far, the only things that I have been able to accomplish by 1:00 p.m. today have been:

  • having a shower and making a pot of coffee;
  • going for a brief walk outside in the sunshine; and
  • creating a pile of 14 months’ worth of pharmacy receipts that I need to submit electronically to my insurance company.

Yes, fourteen months of pharmacy receipts (and please do NOT feel sorry for me; I have a 16-month window to submit pharmacy claims to my insurance company, and I have a well-paying, unionized job with excellent benefits, including pharmacy coverage, up to a certain point when the Manitoba PharmaCare program kicks in).

Yes, as a depressive, I have been avoiding this task for a long, long time, which of course, only makes it worse when I finally do attempt to tackle it (I am the same way about doing the dishes and cleaning my apartment). But I find it truly ironic that the most depressing part of being depressed, is going through the procedures that force you to face your depression, head on, such as submitting pharmacy receipts. I’d rather have a root canal than do this. But I have to face it.

As the coronavirus pandemic has dragged on, my chronic clinical depression has slowly and steadily gotten worse and worse. And, at the one-year mark, I now have to put all options on the table, including taking an extended sick leave from my paying job, something I would not have countenanced even a month ago.

I want to clearly repeat something that I have said before:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Although I suffer from a chronic form of clinical depression, I am not suicidal. I have every intention of living that extra quarter-century to age 80, and beyond! I have to live to witness and document what happens next in the ever-evolving metaverse! But I do need to get some practical matters settled. I hope you understand. 

Please don’t worry about me. I am taking good care of myself and coping with the current situation as best I can.

I am doing literally everything I can to take good care of myself (antidepressant and anti-anxiety medication, talk therapy, and leaning on my real-life and virtual world social networks). For example, on Sunday I held a one-hour Zoom call with the friends in my (currently suspended) Arts and Entertainment group, just to vent about the truly epic, roller-coaster twists and turns of the past couple of weeks, which was wonderfully therapeutic. I talk to many people, including professionals, about my problems. I take long naps. I listen to music. I go for walks. Every so often, I have had a good cry, and a good rage at the universe. Everything helps.

In the past, I have landed up in a hospital psychiatric ward for treatment of severe clinical depression twice (once after my marriage fell apart, and a second time after a textbook-classic case of hit-the-wall job burnout). So I need to pay attention to what is happening to me, rather than continue to put on a brave face and say that I am fine.

Today, I have been following the news media as they report breathlessly on every single possible aspect of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey. And I am absolutely incandescent with rage at how people like Piers Morgan have the audacity to say that Meghan is lying when she says she was pushed to the brink of suicide because of her situation. One person tweeted:

WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU THAT THEY ARE STRUGGLING, BELIEVE THEM. I AM DONE WITH SUFFERING IN SILENCE. You will hear about it!

By the way, the only Piers Morgan footage that you need to watch is this clip featuring the magnificent Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, a Black woman who quite rightly took Piers to task for his response: “Are you out of your Godforsaken mind?!??”

God bless you, Dr. Mos-Shogbamimu, for daring to speak truth to power.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted, one way or another, as to what happens over the next few months as I wait to get a vaccine in my arm, somehow, somewhere, somewhen, God knows when.

Please continue to keep me in your thoughts and prayers, and please stay in touch.

Thank you, and God bless.

UPDATE 5:23 p.m.: Well, I finally had a nap this afternoon to catch up on some badly-needed sleep, and I also had a good cry. And I’ve been listening to a great song by Amy Grant and James Taylor called Don’t Try So Hard on an endless loop:

Today has been a pretty horrible day for me, but I believe it will get better.

UPDATE 8:28 p.m.: Finally, some good news today! My mother called, and she and my stepfather (who are both in their eighties) have been able to make appointments to get their COVID-19 vaccines on March 21st. I am so relieved.

UPDATE March 9th, 2021: Today ITV announced that Piers Morgan is quitting his job at Good Morning Britain. Translation: he was fired, but Piers was given the option to say he was leaving rather than he was fired. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Pandemic Diary, March 5th, 2021: Broken Together

One of my favourite songs is a duet by Amy Grant and James Taylor called Don’t Try So Hard (even though I consider myself an agnostic, I still love Amy Grant’s voice and I am still a big fan of her music, which I listened to endlessly as a teenager in my church youth group days).

So, I tossed it into YouTube Music to spin up a radio station of related songs, and up pops a song from Casting Crowns, Called Broken Together. It’s actually a good song:

How I wish we could go back to simpler times
Before all our scars and all our secrets were in the light…

Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together?
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us?
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together

And “broken together” seems like an apt two-word description of what all of us, collectively as a society, are going through with this soul-crushing, dream-deferring coronavirus pandemic. I find myself wandering through my rarely-left-behind apartment like a zombie. I pause on my way to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup, and suddenly feel the weight of painful reality come crashing down upon me again, and I lean against the wall and close my eyes for a minute, and steel myself to continue. Keep going, keep moving, keep breathing. Keep living.

The next three to six months of the pandemic are going to be hardest stretch of the marathon yet, I fear. It doesn’t help that I have little to no faith in Brian Pallister’s incompetent, pompous, and adversarial Conservative provincial government here in Manitoba, which has largely mismanaged this crisis almost from day one.

For example, take a look at this map showing the locations of vaccination clinics in two neighbouring provinces, Saskatechewan to the west, and my Manitoba to the east:

God, when you wish you were living in Saskatchewan, you really know your life is going sideways. 😉

(OK, I was joking, people. It was a joke. Check the emoji! Please put your pitchforks and your tar and feathers away. I already got almost-cancelled last week, and I have zero wish to repeat that experience.)

Sometimes my anger, verging on pure volcanic outrage, is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, the only thing that propels me through my day. But anger is exhausting, and I am already bone tired. So sometimes—often—it slips into depression. I took three sick days from my paying job last week, something I am not proud of. But it was necessary. I need to take care of myself. I am broken.

So many of us are now feeling broken, yearning for the simpler, pre-pandemic times, and that brokenness, and that need to connect, is expressing itself in society in unexpected and weird ways. We now gather and commiserate on Clubhouse and in Twitter Spaces instead of our local community bars and coffee houses.

Last night, as I was listlessly scrolling for some much-needed socialization on Clubhouse, I came across one room with Lindsay Lohan and her acolytes, and a second room where Paris Hilton was presiding over her minions (what, is this 2006 again?!??). All we need is for Britney Spears to pop up on Clubhouse (Free Britney!) and then we’d have the Unholy Trinity riding together again…I mean, if that isn’t a sign of the impending apocalypse, what is?? (Thank God, Margaret Cho was discussing female comedians and comedy with her usual acerbic wit in another room. Some sanity still prevails.)

Everything old is new again: two-thirds of these people were in Clubhouse rooms last night (surely this must be a sign of the impending apocalypse)

Use whatever technology you can muster—Clubhouse, Twitter, FaceTime and Zoom, and yes, even social VR and virtual worlds—to maintain our connections, our togetherness, in this time of brokenness. Reach out to each other. Comfort each other.

We can be broken, together.

Stay safe and stay healthy!

Pandemic Diary, February 8th, 2021: Life at -47°C (with the Wind Chill)

A person walks through Assiniboine Park with sun dogs (properly called parhelia) in the background on Friday, February 5th, 2021 (Photo by Chris Procaylo, Winnipeg Sun).

My alarm goes off at 6:00 a.m., and it’s still dark outside as I fumble my way out of bed, and check the Environment Canada weather website:

It is -33°C (-28°F for you Americans), which feels like -47°C (a bone-chilling -53°F) when you factor in the wind chill from the stiff breeze. Quickly, I jump into the hot shower, and wash my hair, which is now long enough to tie back in the tiniest of ponytails (I have not had a haircut in one whole year). My goal is to have my hair sufficiently dried by the time I venture outdoors to my destination: my local Walmart store, where I have arranged to pick up my groceries between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. When it feels like -47°C out, you do NOT want to have wet hair.

It is a cold, clear, crisp morning, with the waning crescent moon a thin, sharp scythe in the black sky. My car radio stutters and sputters in the extreme cold. On my way to Walmart, I decide to hit up a McDonalds drive-through yet again (the fourth time in two weeks!) for an sausage and egg McMuffin, and to pick up a box of muffins for later. I am wearing an N95 mask, and two scarves: one beneath my down-filled parka, and one over top, covering my face mask. Trying to make myself understood via the McDonalds intercom system, through an N95 mask and a warm scarf, is a challenge!

“A box of eight muffins, please.”

“An egg McMuffin?”

“No, EIGHT muffins. Five. Six. Seven. EIGHT. MUFFINS.”

I hand the cashier a twenty from my winter-gloved hand, and I tell her to keep the change (I am absolutely NOT dealing with potentially germy change). Then, I pick up my order and find an empty parking spot. I open my bag and groan: once again, they have gotten my order wrong, giving me a sausage and egg McGriddle instead of a McMuffin (I know, I know, First World problems!).

At the Walmart, I park my car in one of the grocery pickup spaces behind the store, and call the number on my cellphone. Shortly, a young woman wheels a cart laden with my groceries to my waiting car. It is bitterly cold, so I leave my car running, and I definitely would not want to be her this morning, as she loads up the back seat of my car with her groceries. I yell a muffled thank-you to her as she closes my car doors, and I drive away, as the sky begins to brighten in the east.

I check my gas tank, and it hovers at just under one-eighth of a tank. (I am still on my second tank of gas since mid-March of last year, which tells you how infrequently I use my car!) I decide that I will visit a nearby full-service Co-Op gas station on my way home, and let somebody else pump my gas for me, just this once. All the attendants are well-bundled against the cold in full snowsuits, warm hats, and scarves, their breath hovering in the air around them, under the fluorescent lights, as they wait for cars to service.

I hand my gas attendant forty dollars through my car window, tell him to keep the change, and drive home. The Shopping Cart Gods have smiled upon me; there is an empty shopping cart standing next to my apartment garbage dumpster, and it only takes one trip to ferry my groceries the last few dozen metres to my doorstep. I also give silent thanks that I have a first-floor apartment door which opens directly to the outside—no need to traverse any pf the stairs or other common areas in my building!

Glasses foggy, I doff my parka, hat, scarves, and pants, wash my hands thoroughly with soap and hot water, and carefully remove my N95 mask, gingerly setting it aside on a corner of my kitchen table. I take a small bottle of Purell out of my pocket and set it next to my wallet, keys, and iPhone. Finally, I collapse on the sofa, exhausted by a simple grocery trip made difficult by the bitter cold and a novel coronavirus.

I do not plan on leaving the house again today, and I am reconsidering a planned second grocery-shopping trip to Walmart tomorrow, for the remainder of my pandemic supplies. Perhaps I can live on sandwiches and canned soup for a few days, at least until it gets warmer? I check the Environment Canada weather forecast for the rest of the week, and see that we are going to be at a (relatively) balmy -23°C (-9°F) by Thursday! Hooray!! I think I can hold out for three or four days…I have lots of Kraft Dinner in my cupboards, and I just stocked up on margarine and milk.

It is now 9:00 a.m., and it is time to brew a small vat of black coffee (something I also stocked up on!), and face the rest of my day.

Pandemic Diary, February 6th, 2021: I Need a Miracle

When my best friend John called me at 12:45 p.m., my iPhone announced his FaceTime call. I groaned, rolled over, and pulled the covers over my head. The winter cold and the pandemic lockdown combined have tipped me over into full-blown hibernation mode, and made me a grumpy, sleepy gay bear.

It is currently -27°C (-16°F) up here in Winnipeg, and with a strong north-west wind, it feels like -44°C (-47°F) with the wind chill. These are the kinds of things that you do not learn from the glossy Travel Manitoba brochures, people.

Even worse, we are expecting a full week of bone-chilling temperatures:

I have learned (and written previously about) how my subconscious sends me messages through song lyrics. At that precise moment when I become aware that I have a particular song running through my head, the lyrics usually have some sort of meaning—something that I’m not consciously thinking about, but which my subconscious is trying to tell me.

Well, on Friday morning, I woke up to this song running through my head:

In other words, my subconscious is telling me: I need a miracle. Or something akin to a miracle, to get me out of this weeks-long period of acedia, depression, and despair, triggered by these unprecedented circumstances. I am having serious trouble getting out of bed and facing the day, and I am having serious trouble feeling motivated to get any work done, both around my house and at work (which, of course, is also “around my house”, as I have been working from home since March 16th, 2020).

I know that a great many other people are struggling, and I also know that I am luckier than most. But honestly, the combination of a bitterly cold patch of Winnipeg winter, combined with the continued province-wide pandemic lockdown (which has been in place since early November), leaves me struggling to cope at times.

Finally out of bed, and low on staples like bread, I decide to bundle up in my down-filled winter parka, don an N95 mask, and head out to warm up the car. My local McDonalds has been closed to in-store dining for three months, but the drive-through is still busy, and I place my order for a burger, fries, and a diet Coke (lunch) and a box of six muffins (breakfast tomorrow, I tell myself, although they will likely all be gone by midnight).

I carefully remove my mask, scrub my hands liberally with hand sanitizer (just in case), and dine in my car, engine running to keep the heat going full blast, in the McDonalds parking lot. This time, when John calls, I pick up, and we chat via FaceTime about how our respective weeks have gone. My day has finally begun, albeit a bit later than usual! And so it goes…I drive home, brew a large pot of coffee, put I Need a Miracle on auto-repeat and crank it, and face whatever challenges come my way.

I hope that you are all taking good care of yourselves and each other in these unprecedented times. Stay strong, say safe, and stay healthy!