A dire warning from isolation

     The new mother should be holding and snuggling with her two-week old son, loving on him and continuing that special bond between mom and child.
    She should be spending this time with her husband, sharing the special memories created by those first days of being parents.
    Instead, she and her husband are in isolation in separate locations, battling a dibilitating respiratory disease.
    “The isolation is awful. What’s worse is wondering if my baby is looking for his mom and dad, wondering where we went. He’s already changed so much and it crushes me knowing I’ve missed such a special time. I could miss his first Easter” the third COVID-19 case in Pendleton County said. She requested that we keep her name and address anonymous.
    She contracted the virus as innocently as many other residents will do today or have done over the past weeks.
    She was having a conversation within the six feet social distancing guideline. The person she was talking with had no symptoms. No cough. No sneezes. Just talk.
    “When they say to stay at least six feet away, they are not joking,” she warned. “My symptoms are still really tough. I haven’t gotten much relief yet.”
    After carrying a case of water upstairs to her husband, she had to sit down to keep from passing out. She says that is not unusual as she has dehydrated before, but when she got to her mom’s, the chills started and her fever was above 102 degrees.
    She posted on Facebook that she was so weak that she could barely stand up. She feels her lungs are only working at 20 percent and cannot get her oxygen above 95 percent. That has dropped as low as 85 percent when she was taking a shower.
    It’s a physical challenge to  brush her teeth, to get a drink her home health nurse had dropped off at the door, or even sit up in bed.
    She has not been given a timeline of when she may expect to recover from the virus, but she is in isolation with “all the proper, equipment to contain, control, and monitor this.”
    It’s her family that is getting her through it even though she cannot see either husband or son.
    “He may not even remember me when I finally get through with this. My husband needs his wife and my son needs his mom. And that’s the only thing getting me through,” she said.
    While she battles her son is “perfect” at the moment, but they monitoring him for sympoms.
    She had thought she had removed herself from danger while she was still pregnant by going on leave from her job, but the obvious danger was not what infected her.
    It was a simple conversation that we all have every single day if we are not practicing social distancing or staying home unless it is a “must” trip or if you are an essential employee helping the community during this time.
    The 24-year-old pleaded, “So please, stay home. Don’t let your teenagers go out in groups. Don’t make unnecessary trips to the store. Don’t underestimate this virus. This is not the flu. This is not ‘what came around in December.’ This virus is serious; it’s killing people.”
    While lamenting the isolation she is facing from her husband and baby, she pleaded one more time to readers, “The best thing you can do is stay home, act like you’re infected and isolate your family while you can still hold them.”
    And to do the one thing she cannot but longs to do.
    “Kiss your spouse and hug your babies tight. I’d give anything to be able to do that to my husband and baby.”