Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

BA2 NYC

An omicron 'subvariant' is doubling in NY, just as mandates lift

 

I have never seen more beer and blood spilled on public transportation than the morning I rode the Metropolitan Line out to Wembley for the FA Cup Final.

Those folks are crazy.

 

This is why we cancelled a trip out of the country in January. Vaxxed/boosted and not concerned about severe illness but also could not get stuck longer than we planned to be away.

Hopeful that things continue to improve and that requirement will be lifted.

 

We did the same for the same reason.

 

At the beginning of COVID just about exactly two years ago, my primary concern was to stay alive myself, since I am in a couple of the major comorbidity groups. Second was to keep my aunt (83) and two uncles (91 and 87 with mid-stage Alzheimer's) alive.

(For chronological contexr, my mom passed in 1994 and would be 91 right now; dad died in 2001 and he'd be 96.)

Well, my 91-year old uncle (my dad's younger brother), who retired a Colonel in the USAF, had remained in good overall health, but my cousins in Kansas City reported he'd been declining over most of 2021 and was restricted to home care. Last June, he slipped away.

My Alzheimer's uncle in Minnesota, my mom's younger brother, remained in pretty good general health but also declined through much of the year. He'd been isolated in a care facility for most of 2020, unable to have visitors.

His Alzheimer's progression was uneven; my cousins reported he was conversationally OK probably two thirds of the time; he recognized people in front of him, but lost track of people he hadn't seen for a while. He understood the basic details of the pandemic and the need for isolation. In any case he stayed COVID free, but in the autumn, he also started declining, and his lucid time started to dwindle as well. Even in his last weeks, he retained some mental clarity, but slipped away in October.

So that left my 85-year old aunt, my mom's youngest sister. She was still up and around, living in her family house with housekeeping help three times a week. She'd fly to Minneapolis once a month or so to keep up with her brother. She remained active as the chairman of a hospital fundraising board, and even rode to Ann Arbor for a couple football games last fall.

She had a couple of two day hospital stints last fall, but nothing considered too daunting for a mid-octogenarian.
Last Friday, she took a fall at home. Broken hip.

Her own mother, my Nana, had had the same surgery at age 98, recovered to the point of cane walking and lived another year, but my aunt developed complications after the surgery which progressed into cascade failure --kidneys quit, breathing problems developed and got worse, and by Saturday night she was gone.

So all three are gone. All three beat COVID but not Father Time.

They were the last of my parents' families, the last real links to my grandparents, and really the last real links to my cousins. I'll see a few of them at the funeral Thursday, but that'll probably be the last time most of my mother's family is together.

Things pass away.

 

Sorry. That's a lot of sorrow

 

Honest olds question: Do old people's hips break just in the course of walking and they fall, or does the fall break the hip?

I've eaten it a few times just as a young slipping on ice et al., and the main thing I'd be worried about are collarbones and bumps to the head.

 

Condolences, my friend. I send the warmest thoughts of this household.

 

It's a constant struggle for women whose bones tend to get more brittle as they age. Broken hip killed my mother-in-law. Even if you don't have full-blown osteoporosis, breaking a hip is a real concern I think once you get to your '80s and '90s

 

Both.

 

Breaking news! Masks in schools helped to reduce the transmission of COVID. Who would've thunk it?

School districts that required masks this fall saw significantly fewer coronavirus cases than those where masks were optional, according to a large study of Arkansas schools by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/08/school-mask-cdc-covid-transmission/