The Los Angeles coronavirus numbers are positively hideous. After watching Italy and New York in horror this spring...now, it’s us. LA is the world epicenter for COVID at the moment, with no sign of letting up. Indeed, with Christmas just a week away, I don’t see our numbers dropping until well into February. Our ICUs currently are at zero capacity, which has made us all afraid to drive or do anything physically risky. It’s all horrifying. It’s so much worse than back in March, and yet we were way more scared and cautious then. At least now we have more information - we know how it spreads and what activities are safe and which aren’t (although honestly nothing seems safe at the moment), and the first vaccines are being administered to health care workers as we speak, with the general public to follow in maybe two to three months...? There is a light at the end of the tunnel for sure. It’s just that the tunnel at the moment is very, very dark.
In the midst of all this horror we have, in fact, decided to go to Joshua Tree tomorrow. I have mixed feelings even though I know the logic is correct - we won’t be in contact with any other humans, so what’s the harm? Still, it’s nerve wracking. This could be a fun getaway or it could be the worst decision of my life. Everything is at that level right now. So we will be off grid in a crazy hippie compound sleeping in a fabricated Boulder house for three nights. We might freeze our asses off and come home on day 2. It’s going to be very cold and there’s no electricity. Am I crazy? Don’t answer that.
I am going to hide this trip from everyone because I know I’ll be judged for it and I understand that. I, too, am silently judging friends who post about visiting family, getting on airplanes, meeting with friends indoors. I don’t know their circumstances. Maybe they’ve all been rigorously testing. Maybe somebody is profoundly depressed and lonely and the risk of them being left alone at the holidays is worse than the minor risk of catching something while traveling. If our trip involved campgrounds, shared facilities, hotel rooms or airplanes I wouldn’t do it. I’m only going because I know we’ll be alone. But still. I know every step outside this house is a risk of turning our happy family into a horrible preventable tragedy, and that fills me with terror. God, that vaccine can’t come fucking fast enough.
In other news I risked infection this week to go see a Kaiser physical therapist about my arm, and Lo and behold, I have something called “frozen shoulder” that apparently is very common among women my age, has no cause and no cure. And can take 1-2 years to resolve. And there’s really nothing I can do to help myself or speed healing. I can get a shot if the pain is unbearable, but apparently many people get zero relief from it, so I’m reluctant. I’m glad “do nothing” is the answer, rather than “submit yourself to hours of agonizing exercises every day or risk losing use of your arm permanently” which is what I was afraid of. The thought of enduring this misery - having maybe 20% function of my left arm, with many agonizing episodes per day - for up to another year or two positively fills me with despair. I’ve had this since March - maybe I’ll be lucky and it’ll resolve by March again; maybe it’s only just now morphing into “frozen shoulder” and I have a year or two more to go. It’s awful. Just another fucking awesome thing to visit me in 2020. Ugh.
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