Morning Anxiety 2: Family preparedness

Holy crap! The radio says the kid who is sick with probably H1N1 goes to the school where the world's most irrepressible nephew went to for pre-kindergarten. That school is just up the road from where RantWoman lives. She can walk there. That school is now closed for a few days while the sick boy recovers, everything gets sanitized, etc. Maybe that means everyone with exposure issues is staying home. However, since that is the kind of urban school where lots of people ride the bus as their main mode of transportation, that means there are a lot of people in the 'hood who possibly have already been exposed or who will mock our President's entreaties to stay off the bus if sick simply because they have no other way to get to their medical care. Look for an uptick in sales of hand sanitizer and soap at least.

(Wonder if avoiding infection will also cut down on the gangbangers' inclinations to shoot at each other too.)

The other King County cases are a primary care doctor with members of her household also now possibly sick and another guy the morning news says little about. RantWoman wishes all affected a full and speedy recovery. RantWoman now interrupts this outbreak of good wishes to address her own special freakout and family anxieties.

One of RantWoman's current Make your own job gigs involves teaching disaster preparedness skills all kinds of ways to her friends and neighbors. However, RantWoman's efforts to impart same to her extended family and to have family conversations about a couple subtle but important concepts are, well, bumpy. RantMom recently allowed as how she has no interest in helping organize training in her own building but that if they wind up holding events when she is available, she certainly will go. RantMom is sort of a busy lady and if she goes, RantWoman can at least nag her gently based on whatever RantMom reports back. RantWoman also suspects that there might be a measure of paralyzing nervousness and denial about RantMom's reaction. Since RantMom is hardly unique on that score, forge ahead anyway.

Little Sister is a MUCH harder problem. Little Sister has very complicated medical issues including, no surprise to anyone reasonably conscious, a diagnosed anxiety disorder. Little Sister's medical issues tend to be things that generate three or four inconclusive trips to the ER at all hours before some attentive practitioner finally thinks through all the symptoms and realizes that the problem most assuredly is not all in Little Sister's head. Meanwhile Little Sister has probably gone through multiple cycles of mental freakout over her situation, what "average" means in terms of run-of-the-mill medical run-around, and generalized vexation and aggravation.

Little Sister's husband, nephew's father is from Guatemala. English is a barrier. So is complex info in any language. At the moment Little Sister is still recovering from major surgery a couple months ago. The general trend is positive but the recovery is slow, with, RantWoman thinks still some heightened concern about infection. In other words, in the middle of pandemic pandemonium, Little Sister is exactly the kind of person who both might really need medical care and should definitely try to avoid the all-too-frequent camp out for hours in the ER lobby experiences that define one face of our current healthcare system.

It's also not like preparing to cope with one disaster exactly handles others. Little Sister made much less effort to go anywhere during the Snowpocalypse than even RantWoman did. Little Sister can order groceries online if needed now. But RantWoman is stuck on issues around Little Sister and medical care amid the flu issues going around, and the anxiety disorder gets in the way of even talking about options. Maybe RantWoman just has to let things play out and figure if there are crisis moments, everyone involved will work things out in the moment. To say the least that is an interesting approach to anxiety management.