Thursday, September 30, 2021

Alarums and Excursions

 It has been a month since I switched to full-on rehabilitation mode. A fairly intense and strenuous two and a half hours or so, each morning Tuesday through Friday, following the Monday morning home visit therapy session, and supplemented by several daily sessions at home of whatever exercises the therapists have recommended, seems to be about right. 

Occasional shopping trips, suitably masked and distanced, are practical opportunities to test the returning functions, and point up any real-life shortcomings that require more work. One quickly learns the limits of one's balancing skills, for instance, when carrying five or six kilogram shopping bags while using forearm crutches.

A shopping excursion last Sunday took me on a drive across town and gave me a chance along the way to check on the status of a restaurant and pub that I'm planning to visit again when the current pandemic countermeasure restrictions are lifted, or at least eased. For now, they've both decided to wait to reopen until they can do so under more viable conditions. The news today is that Saitama will be following Tokyo's lead closely, essentially allowing restaurants and bars to serve alcohol until eight in the evening and stay open until nine, starting  from October first. That's still very limiting, but even an eight o'clock last call is a considerable improvement. It appears that the forecast is for draft beer this coming weekend.

Autumn having arrived in the wake of the typhoon that pushed summer out, Sunday afternoon was cool, and cooled further once the sun set. I was happy about that, since Monday morning walking practice with the home visit physical therapist in the hottest days of summer had been a heat stroke risk. Later in the evening, however, I quickly went from pleasantly cool to shivering with chills, and donning a sweater and hooded sweatshirt didn't make much difference. A check showed that my temperature had rapidly risen to 38.5: not that high, but very sudden, and alarming in these pandemic times. Naturally,  COVID-19 came immediately to mind...not the most warming of thoughts.

So early Monday morning the PT visit was cancelled, as was the rehab session for the following morning,  and a reservation made for a COVID-19 test at the Nishida Clinic, where I've been a regular for a couple of decades. Their protocol for the test is to have the testees arrive shortly before noon and wait in their cars in the parking lot, to minimize contact with the other clinic patients and staff. I showed up early, called to let them know I'd arrived, and waited until a trio of nurses in PPE gear wheeled out some equipment and took up station behind the car. Dr. Nishida rushed out in a full protective suit, very different from his usual tie and casually worn lab coat image. The test was done quickly, and I then waited a little longer for the nearby pharmacy's gowned and masked staffer  to deliver some medicine to my car, with the remainder to be delivered to my home mailbox. Nobody was taking a chance of infection by having me inside their facility, and very justifiably so.

Then I returned home, to quarantine myself until Dr. Nishida reported the test results Tuesday evening. By this time my fever had already dropped somewhat, and I still didn't have any other remarkable symptoms aside from a mild runny nose. Having been vaccinated already, though, and being aware that some infected people are even entirely asymptomatic, I still couldn't dismiss the possibility that I had the virus. I really didn't look forward to the tracking and testing and general disruption that this would cause among the people with whom I've been in contact: mostly rehab-connected people and center staff and users. 

The announcement that the test results were negative came late Tuesday afternoon: a great relief, indeed, for me and--as I found out when I showed up at rehab Wednesday morning--for my Care Manager, and the therapists, nurses, and other medical staff who deal with me regularly. My attempts to apologize for causing concern with what turned out to be a false alarm were met with a clear and very gratifying consensus response that it's much better to be safe than sorry, and to err on the side of caution.

I would just as soon have October be a little less exciting, at least from a pandemic point of view.

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