When N was around six months old, I developed mastitis and then a thrush infection.
Now, if you've ever been a breastfeeding mother and develop thrush, it 1. is painful and 2. sets you off on a course of fighting an invisible enemy.
Maybe things have changed and the instructions for how to mitigate thrust differ now, but back in 2004, I went down a rabbit hole of crazy trying to fight thrush. I tried to follow everything I read. Boiling N's pacifiers and teething toys (she will probably develop cancer from all the leached plastic from that). Using paper towels for months in case I was getting anything from multi-use towels (like in the powder room). Trying to wash everything that came into my baby's mouth. NUTS, I tell you.
This was one of the things, besides my hormones, that led me deep down into the pit of OCD where I'd never visited for so long before and seen such icky sides to it.
It felt like I was never, ever, ever going to win.
How, exactly, do you fight something you can't see?
This is what I've been thinking about since M's COVID diagnosis yesterday, especially as it concerns keeping the rest of us "safe."
My OCD wants to go bonkers trying to keep everyone away from each other and all of us wear masks nonstop and clean, and clean, and clean.
But then I think back to what my mental health was like fighting that invisible yeast. I was fucking insane and as miserable as I can remember being my whole entire life. I stopped eating and sleeping and started crying and waking up in full-blown panic attacks.
Sure, it was hormones, but it was also a lot of feeling completely and totally out of control and not being able to handle it.
I'm medicated now, but I also don't think it is wise to intentionally poke the OCD bear if you can help it. Especially when under stress. Stress brings out the worst in OCD. And I've been stressed (like everyone) for the past 18 months with additional stress for all of Dad's health issues last year.
So we're taking some steps to try to keep the four vaccinated in the house "safe," but maybe not as safe as we could.
First of all, M is 11. I'm not locking him in his room like a pariah. If it was me or D, we'd lock ourselves away and try to keep the kids safe. But the most vulnerable person in our house is sick so what is the point?
G is sleeping on a mattress in the living room (which in some ways is kind of stupid because he slept in the same bedroom with M the four nights between M's negative COVID test on Friday and his positive COVID test on Tuesday).
We're keeping the ceiling fans on where M is to move the air around for when we are near him.
I changed the filter in the HVAC system, and we're keeping the house fans running at all times (although this may be the worse thing to do because of circulating the virus).
I brought a box fan upstairs to circulate the air in the kitchen and office since there is no ceiling fan.
I disinfected the remote control because M was using it yesterday.
But I'm not wearing a mask inside my house, and I'm not making my sick kid do it either.
We did a shit ton of things to keep "safe," and it didn't keep us totally safe. I don't for one second regret any of those things, but I think it is kind of absurd now to try to put the cat back in the bag, especially since we don't know when between Friday and Tuesday that M became contagious. At what moment did he officially become contagious? We will never know.
I may be walking around today, right this minute, positive with COVID. Just because I was negative yesterday does not mean I am negative today.
For my own sanity, I cannot allow myself to engage with this invisible enemy the way I did in 2004.
I hope if the four of us who are vaccinated get sick, it is mild. But ramping up my anxiety and destroying my mental health in the effort to stay physically healthy may not be the best choice at this time.
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