Pizza Delivery During A Pandemic

Domino's and Papa John's have started contactless delivery during this time of covid. Which is great, I don't have to worry about someone getting cozy next to me while giving up the pizza like we are trying to buy drugs.

That is if my wife and I still ordered pizza because we don't because we are broke.

Like a Dad joke.

Anyways

The aforementioned institutes of pizza delivery, those Titans of pie are running ads stating how they are handling your za during this uncertain time. 

Domino's says no one will open the box after the contents have been placed inside and the lid is closed.

Papa John's says they have a sticker sealing theirs.

I don't know about other pizza places but before this time I should've felt confident that after those lids were closed at the store that they were not opened until they were opened again by those that have purchased them. It is an unwritten agreement so to say. Now with this proclamations and addition of a seal; for Papa John's, I'm lead to believe that there was a possibility that someone may have been snookering stray toppings before dropping off the goods?

Sounds about right to me.

These practices should've been started years ago not just because of a pandemic. Now they make it sound like this is being done for your piece of mind. I didn't ask for this but now it opens up, nigh, verifies that before there was a chance that I'm short a slice of pepperoni or chicken wing because Donnie has the munchies.

Fucking Donnie. 

Coronavirus

Covid19

Coronavirus

SARS-covid-2

Whatever name you associate with this virus, it has affected all of us. No one on this planet is going to go through this year without being touched by this in some sort of way.  If you manage to not become ill, you might know someone that does, you need to practice social distancing, wash your hands and use sanitizer more often, dealing with shortages in the stores because of panic buying and on and on and on.

If you have read this anytime within the past few posts, you know that my wife is a high risk person if she were to catch it.  I being a truck driver am at a high risk of not necessarily catching it but possibly carrying it home to my wife.  The plus for me is that I am a introvert naturally so keeping to myself is pretty easy, as I used to say in my younger days, "I hate everybody equally". (I could be a pleasure to be around as you could tell) So staying in my truck and not hanging out in truckstops or my companies operating centers comes second nature.  

The issue are with those that think this is no big deal and that do not practice keeping their distance.  People that are trying to infect others purposely by not self quarantining and still going out to stores or to work.  

This is larger than just me or you, it is larger than any of us will ever know.  We need to work together to keep each other safe and to keep those that are high risk safe by practicing social distancing, hygiene and staying home.

Now about glove wearing.  Just wash your hands and use sanitizer when you can't.  If you aren't changing gloves everytime that you touch something new, like when shopping, you are just possibly spreading the virus to everything you touch after.  Think about how medical personnel use gloves or food service workers, they change gloves after changing tasks.  For medical personnel that is after each patient and using sanitizer before and after wearing gloves.  My wife was in the hospital earlier this year and last week (I'll touch on last week shortly) so I was able to observe the earlier this year checkups by nurses and Drs during that time.  Food service workers are supposed to change gloves and wash hands after handling raw foods, ready to eat foods (think raw vegetables not being cooked before eating, cooked meats or cured meats, etc.) handling cleaning products or cleaning, handling money. For food service there is potentially lots of glove changing, this is why many restaurants do not allow moving between stations, i.e. a grill cook handling chicken then assembling the plate that cooked chicken then goes on.  Point is, don't wear gloves when out shopping.  Wipe down your stuff after you get home, is that really necessary?  Maybe not but considering the length of time that this survives on surfaces, I feel it is best to practice it.

Now about my wifes recent visit to the ER/hospital.  She had an event that her life vest was about to shock her.  She was awake and was able to stop it before she was shocked.  Her mother took her to the ER to get checked out, my wife was admitted for a couple days.  I had left out for the week that day and turned around and came right back home once I was notified of what happened.  Once I got home, I was not able to see my wife.  No visitors. Period.  If she needed anything, it was to be brought with her room number on the bag and dropped at the entrance.  Hospitals are on lockdown during this time.  It sucks if you have someone in the hospital or if you yourself need to be admitted because depending what the  visit is for it could be the difference in the length of stay and how well one will recover.

Also, stop with the posts about all our pork being processed in China and shipped back to the U.S.; it is not true.  Smithfield was purchased in 2013 by a Chinese conglomerate but the pigs are raised in the U.S., slaughtered in the U.S., processed in the U.S. and some is sold here in the U.S. but the lions share is shipped to China to be sold in China.  The reason is that China's swine population was decimated by Swine flu and they could not recover so they import most of their pork nowadays.  The United States of America is the largest producer of pork in the world, China is the largest consumer.  Kinda of like soy, China consumes it, U.S. is the largest seller of soy to China; we are the second largest producer in the world, Brazil is the largest.

Anyways, those are my thoughts about all of this, scattered brain and all.

Sleeping

Wife has had a bit of a scare recently the past couple days with issues of the heart. Issues of the health heart kind, not of the trouble love kind; just to clarify.

Anyways.

Three nights in the hospital and the second and third night she's been able to sleep, something she has not been able to do for a long time. See, she doesn't sleep much or very well to begin with and it's been getting worse for some time. Started with her not sleeping long in the bed and moving to her recliner. Then escalated to her laying down when I go to bed moreso for me, then going to her recliner. To finally just starting in her recliner to try to sleep and getting very little.

The past month she's been having trouble breathing or really getting winded after a very short while. She'd go to Dr. with Dr. prescribing a new asthma medication or saying it's a cold/sinusitis/bronchitis and prescribe antibiotics with steroids with a "check up in a month". 

Meanwhile it's only getting worse.

To the point that two days after Christmas, we go to emergency room for, to me, a concerning but of leg swelling. That's a sign of heart issues BTW. That emergency room says gastritis, and bronchitis, sends us home. There was a prescription for something, can't remember and the full amount of a stomach medicine like Omeprazole. Oh, they did do an ultrasound on the swelling leg for any blood clots, there were none.

She checks up with normal Dr. and she gets some antibiotics and steroids shot. Make a checkup.

Doesn't help. Still having shortness breath and no sleep except for a few minutes at a time.

Things get no better, she goes to Minute Clinic at CVS. She gets more antibiotics and steroids.  No change.

Back to regular Dr. for a "just needs to run its course".

...

.....

Anywhoo

Another Minute Clinic visit she gets some stomach meds because she's throwing up. Has been this entire time, it's just really worse now. They prescribe the nuclear option kind. They help at first but then they don't. 

So. Saturday I get home early morning 2:30. We talk, I go to bed after a shower. She's in recliner not sleeping. I wake up to her throwing up she says she's fine, I go back to sleep. In the morning (noon), I wake up and make us something to eat. She eats most of breakfast. She's worried, I'm concerned, we decide to go to emergency room 20 miles away. 

We get checked in and when we go back the PA and nurse dig down through her history. Blood is drawn, CT scan done, EKG hooked up. Wife is stressing about cost, I'm telling her don't worry about we'll get through this, I'm concerned about you and not the cost of this. You (her) being healthy is more important to me. This hospital says they think it looks like congestive heart failure, your being admitted, either here or the next hospital over. 

Spoiler alert: it was the next hospital. 

Away she goes in an announcement ride to the next emergency room. I understand that every Dr needs to probably hear why you decided to come to emergency room but after Dr. number three comes around, well you wonder if anyone is working any of this down or inputting into a computer that others can look at before seeing the patient. I'm sure there is a reason, maybe to make sure people aren't there to score pain meds or just a hypochodriac. I understand but in that moment it makes you feel frustrated. She sat in a room in the emergency room overnight (Saturday) and most of the next day (Sunday) before getting a room in the afternoon. The following day (Monday) they worked on getting her leg swelling down and drawing blood every six hours to check for a certain protein that the heart releases after a heart attack. 

Tuesday, they did a heart catheterization to check for clogs, she was clear. Once she was back into her room, the cardiologist came by to give us the skinny. He doesn't think it's congestive heart failure but it's thinking more AFib. Which medication can help to strengthen heart, they believe it is weak from a possible viral infection. She will be fitted with a life vest, which is a vest that had an aed built so if her heart stops, it'll shock her back.

Wednesday, tomorrow, we hope she can go home. Hoping.

I started this only to say I'm sitting her beside her while she sleeps soundly for the first time in months. She wakes up occasionally after mumbling things, falls back asleep. One time, she had her arm up, palm flat and did like a queen wave, then back to sleep.

It's cute.