A Peek At What It’s Like Living With An Essential Worker During A Pandemic

It’s kind of hard to believe that we’re all living in this alternate universe. A pandemic has taken over the world and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We’re all at the mercy of mother nature as she screams at the top of her lungs, tells us to settle down and has put us all in a, what seems like never-ending, time out.

We stay-at-home alot now and though that hasn’t changed in extremes for me, things are different. Though everyone’s situation is different, some better, some worse this is a peek into our story. It’s an ongoing story. Thought I’d share.

What looms over our head is the worry that my boyfriend might bring home the virus and infect us all.

See, although he’s not a doctor or nurse, my guy is considered an essential worker. He works at a grocery warehouse. Lots of people forget that there are people who work in the warehouses that pack the food onto pallets so they can be shipped to the grocery stores for you to be able to shop. Though our front line doctors and nurses are in the thick of it, COVID-19 looms around my family on a daily basis.

Our routine here at home has changed a bit. We no longer go shopping just to get out of the house. If we do happen to leave the house, we don’t just come through the front door casually and greet each other. No, there is a strict routine we all follow, more so my boyfriend than anyone else since he’s the one who goes out in order to work and to shop so that the rest of us can stay out of harm’s way as much as possible.

He comes home from work and takes his boots off at the door, walks by us, and no one is allowed to hug or kiss him. He makes his way to the basement where he removes his clothes and into a garbage bag they go and then he sprays his boots with Lysol.

This happens every day that he works. We have trained ourselves and our 4-year-old to just let him walk by with a hello and hold on to our hugs and kisses a bit longer. After his shower, he comes to find us all and say our hello’s, and our day continues as it normally would.

On his day off, he goes grocery shopping. The bags are brought in through the back door directly into the kitchen. I put on gloves and grab the Lysol wipes and start wiping down the groceries one by one so they can be put away. This is a routine for us. We’re almost getting used to it. Almost.

Why worry? There have been positive COVID-19 cases at the warehouse he works and we’ve already had a scare. He came home not feeling so great one day and called in the next day with aches and pains, chills, fever. He was so nervous he might have caught it that he self-quarantined in our room. He had a telemed call with his doctor and was told to stay home, a test was ordered and then we had to wait. Ah, the wait…

He ate his meals in our room alone. Our little guy didn’t understand why Papi couldn’t play with him and why he couldn’t snug with him in bed. I cleaned more than usual (kind of like Monica from friends on speed) and held my feelings in until my evening shower. That was/is my outlet lately. Crying in peace is what I needed since there was nothing I could do to change what was happening. Days lasted weeks and time almost seemed to stop until we received a negative test result. That was a long wait.

Seriously, I celebrated and screamed of happiness when the nurse gave me the results. I ran and hugged him so hard and then he called our little man over to hug and kiss him since it had been so long. We could finally get back to our regularly scheduled programing, well, until the next time he doesn’t feel well. And so goes each day, with the hope that nothing happens but with the fear that it will.

I’m sure everyone’s experience is different. I know so many people handle things differently and others who don’t think this is any big deal at all. For me it is. For my family it is.

It has since been seen and is currently being studied the aftereffects Covid- 19 has on children. some children have developed rare symptoms like Kawasaki disease. You can read more about that HERE. So, although we are doing everything, we can keep our little man safe, the threat of him catching it and the possibility of developing adverse symptoms because of it is giving us even more reason to be more cautious.

I get that some people don’t understand, and others won’t open their minds to the fact that they don’t know how their body will react to the coronavirus if they catch it. I get that living in denial is a self-preservation auto reaction. The reality is this. unless you’ve taken a COVID test and received a negative result, you may be a carrier. An asymptomatic carrier. It’s like being in a Stephen King movie. you don’t know who around you could contaminate you or your loved ones. When does it end?!

With that, I sign off. I hope that all my readers and those you love to stay healthy.