Yeah, that's what I get for using the word "normal"...

This week I had "planned" to share my therapy experience and that whole path with you guys, but life kicked me in the tail in ways I didn't see coming. Literally 20 minutes of me getting to work after my therapy appointment, we got a call that a Covid-positive co-worker's wife (he was sick too), literally dropped dead! She was just 55 years old. Their daughter has it too, but she was infected elsewhere, so she hadn't been in the house. His nurse of a sister stepped in to help him do CPR on his wife, so now she has it too.

But here is where I start to get angry...within hours of her passing, there were pictures on Facebook of him hugging various members of his immediate family, including a negative son (which now isn't) and many others (a lot of which are also now positive) because of all of the outpouring of grief. I would be terrified of infecting someone else, a lot more than worrying about getting a hug from someone. Is that just me? I get that I don't feel grief like others do (and I deplore being touched, let alone hugged, at the best of times), but my lack of empathy gene still couldn't handle knowing I willingly infected (and potentially killed) someone else, especially your own child, all for the sake of physical comfort. That's the part of grief I guess I don't understand. I kind of see it as being more selfish...wanting something so superficial (as a hug) that could potentially lead you to another funeral in week or two.

I could rant forever about empathy (or my lack thereof, or maybe "misplacement" is a better word) and what I think is proper, but ultimately, that's someone else's burden not mine. What IS important was what happened at roughly the exact same time...the ABSOLUTE WORST THING EVER...my Sister had to admit, as we were texting each other about the co-worker's wife (it's a VERY small town and she heard the exact same time we did), that she herself was sick! I think she wasn't planning on telling me at all, because she knew how I'd react (total freak out, of course, I cried the rest of the afternoon), but because of those events, she knew the jig was up and it was fessing up time. And yes, she tested positive the next day, although she thought she just had the flu, despite being exposed a few days before.

It took my Brother-In-Law a few more days, and at first he tested negative, but he got sick a couple of days later and then his test came back positive too. Despite her best efforts to protect him, I figure they were infected at the same time, it just took it a bit longer to grab him. I'm trying to trust what she's telling me, that yes, they are sick, but they are dealing fine, but I'm still very scared. I haven't actually spoken to her (or seen her, obviously), so I can't judge that for myself. It's just a daily check-in text because I don't want to annoy her (and I'm already managing that enough with what little I'm doing).

Her path to Covid was quite different to my co-worker's (he's already had five scares because of recklessness, she had been a LOT more careful...this was unavoidable) and since their diagnosis, they have been super-responsible and staying away from everybody (obviously the RIGHT thing to do), but nurses are the WORST about judging their own symptoms and they are usually the ones who you read the horror stories about (although I bet she's watching her husband like a hawk!). I would gladly take this on instead of her and my Bro. I am trying to stay calm because I know getting freaked out isn't helping her, but I'm also sure she probably knows I'm on the borders of losing it. There is literally NOTHING I can do and everytime my phone goes off, I just feel sick and I'm scared to look at it. They should be at the "getting over it" stage, but neither one of them are. Until I see a series of "today I'm much better" texts along with a negative test for both of them, my brain won't shift gears.

So, on to something else because I am freaking myself out again. I tried to stitch last week, but I just couldn't. And then I decided that maybe it was because I was just done with Maleficent and needed to switch to something else, so Sunday I did. I think it helped stitch-wise, but I still only stitched for a couple of hours before I had to stop because my mind was racing too much. I switched to Alice and the B's, which I left off back in March here:

And, in that two hours, made it here:

Considering the short time limit, I did stitch a lot, you just can't tell because it's so spread out. It really is a HUGE piece!

I have another therapy appointment this Friday, and I honestly couldn't care less, so I guess that's better than the terror I went into the last one with (and the nausea I came out of it with). Maybe, by next week, I can get into my big therapy story and this whole "my family has Covid too" story will be far behind all of us.

I will say though, all my blustering about, "oh, it will take something drastic for the people around here to wake up and take Covid seriously" was literally just that...bluster. Even with a death of a family member and now four employees having had it...not a SINGLE person has either changed their stupid ignornant views or their behaviors, so it's just going to get worse. As someone with OCD who has NEVER been a germaphobe, I'm getting worse and worse by the day as I continue to see medical workers pay less and less attention to their own, or their co-workers and, what I would "assume" (although you know what they say about THAT word) should be the most important, their family's safety. I'm just really angry and scared right now and I guess I want to place blame somewhere, so the idiots of the world it is!