Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Tonight's picture was taken in February of 2009. The artwork you see was created by Mattie. That day I taped all his creations (for that week) to the front of his hospital room door. Since Mattie was a frequent flyer at the hospital, practically everyone knew who he was. Yet to me the art work helped his caregivers start a conversation with Mattie. Because over time, the treatment impacted Mattie's behavior, mood, and outlook on life. Meaning he really did not want to talk to other people and despised having chatty conversation. But talking about his art work typically got Mattie out of a funk and engaged in meaningful interactions. 

Quote of the day: Today's coronavirus update from Johns Hopkins.

• Number of people diagnosed with the virus: 27,277,461
• Number of people who died from the virus: 471,147

When I got back to Washington, DC in January, I started looking into ways to sign my parents up to receive the COVID vaccine. Given that they live in Los Angeles County, I started with their department of public health. That was a very frustrating experience and it took me about a week of calling at all times of the day to get a hold of a LIVE person and enter my parents names and phone numbers to the LONG registration list. There are clinics and centers all over LA that are working through the County to distribute the vaccine. But given the volume of people in LA, I realized that I couldn't stop with that list. So I began searching chain pharmacies and grocery stores with pharmacies. I tried getting my parents signed up everywhere, but each day, all I found was NO appointments were available. 

Then a friend of my parents wrote to me last night and sent me links to Walgreens, Ralph's (a super market), and Rite Aid. I dropped everything I was doing and started to go through the process to sign up with each store. Again NOTHING. It seems like as soon as the appointments are announced, within minutes they get filled. 

Today while I was having lunch (mind you it was at 4pm), I sat down by the computer and decided for the fun of it to get onto Rite Aid's website site. Unlike all my previous attempts I actually got into the system and also could see that appointments were available! I was STUNNED! So literally I had two windows open on my computer at the same time. Filling out one form for my mom and another for my dad. I was moving like the wind because I had no idea if I was going to get timed out and lose the vaccine spot. 

I have been at it for a month searching for the vaccine and I am hoping that on March 2, when my parents arrive at the pharmacy, they can actually get their first dose. At this point, I am grateful for Rite Aid's COVID qualifier website which was easy to use and the pharmacy is not far away from where my parents live. Because my biggest fear was that they would have to travel 50 miles away to a county site to get this done.