Back to School…?

Our local school district gave two options for this year’s school year: 100% virtual or 100% in person. After weeks of debating the merits of all the options we heard about around the country and after one week of carefully considering the actual options presented by the school, we made the decision to keep Little Miss Minion home this semester for virtual kindergarten. I am in no way saying that this is the best choice. All the options suck, for everyone. Everyone wants the best for their kids, and I fully acknowledge that we are lucky to have this option. So I write this post with the disclaimer that it contains my personal opinions and observations about our particular situation.

To the parents who are sending their kids back to school in person—you made a great choice.

To the parents who are keeping your kids home to go virtual—you made a great choice.

To the parents who are pulling their kids from the districts and doing homeschool on their own—you made a great choice.

Little Miss Minion’s pediatrician said that her lungs have likely matured to where they should be, given her respiratory illness history over the past two years. I don’t want to test this theory, but two winters ago, she had a runny nose that lasted approximately 12 hours and gave the bug to me, where it turned into a double ear infection, bronchitis, infection-induced asthma, and almost pneumonia. So clearly her lungs work better than mine on certain things. 😂 The doctor also said that she recommends mask wearing, frequent hand washing, and social distancing wherever possible to reduce the chances of catching or spreading the virus.

The fact remains that the county we live in is seeing a large uptick in cases. The schools have developed a rigorous list of precautions that will be put into place to prevent transmission. The combination of these two facts is going to make (in my opinion) a very unstable situation for consistent education. Between students being sent home for every runny nose, fever, cough, sore throat, headache, stomachache, and generally not feeling well, the teachers and staff will also be held to the same standard. Any symptoms will require a 72 hour quarantine at home after the symptoms are gone without medication. So if a student is sent home on Monday for a fever and the fever disappears the moment they exit school property, that student is not allowed back until Friday. Same thing for teachers. It is only a matter of time before there are either not enough staff to cover the students or not enough students to justify staying open.

The way we saw it, it was not so much a question of virtual or in person. It was a question of her being home from the start, with a consistent schedule and organized setup, or going to school for a few weeks, then getting sent home for a few days, then going back with a new teacher, then being sent home again, and then having to continually arrange a space and provide structure.

We are incredibly lucky that I was already planning on being home for nursing school. We were able to create a space in our basement for a shared classroom. One side is the Minion Kindergarten Academy and the other is Virtual Nursing School. The kindergarten side looks pretty good so far. The nursing side needs a little work—I had been planning on working in our office. I do have an amazing computer shelf that Mr Minion made for me to set my computer on during class. I also made a tea table area over by Miss Minion’s playroom. I’m going to move one of our kettles down there, along with a selection of tea, cups and saucers, and space for a thermos of ice—Miss Minion doesn’t like to wait for her tea to cool.

We are also incredibly lucky to have Mr Minion’s parents able to assist. With him at work, and my clinicals schedule still up in the air, they will be able to take her on those days and continue her virtual school at their house, since school goes wherever her computer goes.

We’ve had a lot of “it shouldn’t have gone this way” in our lives with Little Miss Minion. From her complicated birth, to her infection in the NICU, to her hydrocephalus, to coming home and not being able to have her around people…the list goes on. We are used to it by now, but that doesn’t make it easier.

Summer Update

It has been an interesting summer here at the Minion House. We’ve had lots of walks, lots of time “at the pool” in the backyard (kiddie pool), gardening, tomato picking, and more recently, our area has had an explosion of Covid cases for reasons I can’t get into without wanting to throw my computer through the nearest window. This recent burst of activity has thrown a wrench into the local school district’s reopening plans, and is also impacting my nursing program’s plans.

The official plan for Little Miss Minion’s school won’t be coming out until this week and we will have one week to choose which option we want to do. It sounds like there will be an all in person plan, a hybrid plan, and an all virtual plan. The district has not mentioned what the protocols will be for transportation of kids, eating lunch, bathrooms, masks, etc., but these will hopefully be addressed in the official plan. I’m curious to know what the procedures for a sick child will look like as well, since children do tend to be germ factories even when there is not a global pandemic happening. And does Little Miss Minion still have preemie lungs and a depressed immune system? I don’t want to use this disease as the test.

My school is also altering the plans, but I don’t have a clear picture of what that will look like yet. They have mentioned livestreaming lectures with the option to come in person, virtual labs with in person check off days for skills, and generally trying to give everyone the option to go online where possible. It sounds like clinical days will remain the same, but the partner hospitals have to agree and I don’t know if many of the local ones have enough PPE for their employees, let alone a bunch of students who can’t really do much in terms of patient care. They hope to have more information released this week as well.

Soapbox Moment

As a preemie mom, this pandemic is bringing back much of the same feelings that I had when we were in isolation after Little Miss Minion got out of the NICU. The silver lining of this whole situation is that our household is uniquely prepared for hunkering down, away from germs. We are used to not going to the store as a family. We don’t usually congregate in large groups of people. I have a weekly disinfecting schedule for our house. I did these things because I wanted to keep my child healthy and out of the hospital.

When I hear stories about how people are completely disregarding the recommended safety procedures because they think it is a hoax to take down a certain president, I see red. They clearly haven’t had anyone they know get sick from it (I have). They don’t know of anyone who has died from it (I do). The fact that people are refusing to wear a mask is just absolutely astonishing to me. Masks do nothing for the person wearing them, at least the ones that non-healthcare people have. The average mask is meant to contain droplets that could contain the virus. If I do wear a mask, I am keeping my droplets from coming out into the general area around me. If you are not wearing a mask, your droplets can spray all over the place and become a source of infection for other people. People who are not wearing a mask are essentially saying that they don’t care about spreading disease. They don’t care about YOU.

Some tips for reducing your exposure from a Preemie Mom who has been there:

1. If you have to go out, WEAR A MASK! There are very few legitimate reasons for not wearing one. If my five year old can wear one, so can you. If you can’t wear one, STAY HOME.
2. Stay home unless you have to go out. Please note that there is a difference between HAVE TO and WANT TO. You have to buy groceries. You don’t have to browse the sale shelves or make multiple stops because the store is out of your favorite brand of cereal. Deal with it. If you can order something online, do it. Most places have free shipping.
3. If you do have to go out, make it a quick, solo trip. You don’t need your whole family to come with you. You don’t need your spouse to come with you to the grocery store. Make a list. Get in and get out. Get everything at one place, even if this means you have to do without your favorite brand or a sale item from another store.
4. Just because you are “out” doesn’t mean that this experience counts as one exposure. Every store you set foot into is another chance to spread the virus if you are asymptomatic, or to become infected. If you don’t NEED it, do without.
5. Be smart about your surroundings. If many other people around you in the store are not wearing a mask, get out of the store.
6. If you have ANY symptoms of illness, STAY HOME. I’m always infuriated by how many people have told me “its just allergies” and then they turn out to have a cold or the flu, especially when we were isolating with Little Miss Minion.
7. When you get home, take your shoes off. Launder your mask. Wash your hands with soap. Don’t rely on hand sanitizer unless you don’t have access to soap and water. Soap is better.

The thing that makes me the most angry about this whole thing is the secondary toll that the surges are taking. Irresponsible behavior and the refusal to wear masks leads to a rise in cases, which leads to a rise in hospital beds being occupied. If all the ICU beds in an city are full of Covid patients, there is no room for the pedestrian who got hit by a car on their walk to the bus stop. There is no room for the person who is having a heart attack. There is no room for the cancer patient who is having a reaction to an unrelated virus because their immune system is already shot.

For Little Miss Minion’s last shunt surgery, we waited in the ER for several hours before a bed in the PICU opened up. And it turned out that it wasn’t even a true PICU bed, it was an overflow area that is usually reserved for pediatric cardiac patients. And that wasn’t during a pandemic. If pediatric cases increase, which they probably will if schools reopen without proper protocol, there might not be beds available for unrelated things like shunt surgeries.

Stay safe and healthy!

Don’t forget your mask!