At midnight on Thursday 26 March throughout South Africa it has crashed. For the next 21 days, no one is to leave their homes if they do not go to the supermarket to look for the pharmacy or medical assistance. No dog walking, no running, no food delivery services. Only essential workers are exempt, and this list is small. As president Cyril Ramaphosa made the announcement on March 23, one week after the closing of schools in the country, there were only 402 COVID-19 confirmed cases. But it was important, he said, “to flatten the curve” before widespread outbreaks of fragile health care system overwhelmed the country. By the time the block is entered into force, three days later, plus the number of cases has doubled. life for the majority of South Africans who live paycheck to paycheck (if any) in the small, multi-generational housing, the blockade is a brutal shock but necessary. isolated for the elite of the country, meters, handouts and live-in staff, there is a well stocked inconvenience. For me it is a relief. My husband is particularly vulnerable in the category of people for COVID-19, the way in which the British government intends to stay home for the next 12 weeks. He has avoided much younger cutoff of 75 years for all social contacts, but has a chronic illness and is immunocompromised. But if no one else has taken our precautions social group, he felt ridiculous too serious to follow the recommendations to members to stay home and family, so that they do not. Instead, we tried to compromise. “Contact Tracing” was not going for us to find out who had been exposed to infected persons; It has been tracking physical contact mentally in areas where someone could have been infected. If I wear plastic gloves to press the button in the supermarket parking tickets, I should change it before my steering wheel to touch again? I must disinfect their hands before and after touching the elevator button? What are my areas of reusable shopping bags come in contact with the stores, and what you bring home to my kitchen counter? Our extreme germ prevention measures with routine longtime alone yesterday in the pharmacy, misplaced receipts for my husband disinfect hands to its provisions in the flood, dabbing the credit card with alcohol, and removal gloves he wore while before shopping accidentally touched his face. But the insurance company will reimburse us if we do not have a receipt. It’s worth $530 to pharmacy-already with potentially infected snifflers and cough to crawl to get it back for a replacement plead? Now, with the block, I can put my fears to rest. None of us leave the house any time soon. At least until the food running low. It is updated here with our daily newsletter crown. Nearly five years ago my husband started complaining of low energy, then in his feet and hands tingling. His swollen fingers like sausages, and a few weeks later, he leaned inflexible claws. His skin began to harden; when I wrapped my fingers around his arms, he felt like I was holding a wooden baseball bat. The edges of the lips and eyes thickened sublime white ribs. After several attempts, we finally have a diagnosis: scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disease that tricks the immune system to attack the soft tissue of the body with excess collagen. It was not only his skin, which was at risk of hardening, but also his internal organs. There is no cure for scleroderma, but immunosuppressants, along with an arsenal of steroids, anti-inflammatory and, oddly, a common anti-malaria can slow its progression. Not long after his diagnosis, T doctor told him that the life expectancy is low with scleroderma, those who for five years was a reasonable quality of life expected with a constant control. T asked him if that meant that he had the drug to go to be able to, or if his power would return. His doctor said he did not know; none of his patients had done so far. Meanwhile, it has deep massage of his skin prescribed fabric, weekly physical therapy, regular visits and soften twice a year to check scans of all his internal organs to invisible inconvenience. The four years of diagnosis t have regular visits to the turn gastroenterologist, pulmonologist, cardiologist, ophthalmologist, rheumatologists and the psychiatrist. Twice a week, meets with a therapist who takes for the disease to return to the clutches typically hands. Greet especially the staff at the hospital where he went three times in as many years bleeding capillaries to patch another symptom of the disease in his stomach wall. In clinical pathology, he knows he can ask the only nurse who is able to draw blood to find a vein from his thickened skin. As an American living in South Africa, we see his medical team more frequently than our family. Cape Town hospitals are more familiar now than the streets where we grew up. Now, this routine was stripped away. Even before the block in which the crown was made of many voices in South Africa, T physicians and physiotherapists warned him to be cautious, worried that his weakened immune system would set a higher risk. Now we are more worried about them. For weeks, masks and hand sanitizer were able to find more, and while both have new trickle to the market, we just need to Italy and the United States to look for the future of South Africa to see where the doctors and nurses they are overwhelmed and under-protected. When the first cases appeared in South Africa, we were not particularly concerned about drug shortages. T-drug regimen, eight different drugs taken four times daily articles do not contain anything that would traditionally used in the treatment of an influenza epidemic. Then Minister Donald Trump began touting, prematurely, the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine as a remedy. Prescribed off-label for rheumatoid arthritis, which is one of the most important elements of the treatment T. There was a rush to stocks and India, a leading producer, has banned the export. T took enough for the next month, but if its effective hydroxychloroquine must turn COVID-19 in the treatment, it is unclear whether he will be able to get more. And even if it can, like the fact that he has been the past four years, making it less effective if it is infected by the virus? When we got married, my husband and I agree. I would like to work, and he manage care of the home and the child. It ‘was an agreement that played to our strengths. I hate driving, shopping, pickup of the school and run errands. If you are not out on a mission, I could easily spend a week passes without leaving home. T need to get out. He craves for social interaction, the guy who is doing routine errands. Now that every shopping cart or online pharmacy to pick up a carrier of the disease, our roles are reversed. “This is the first time I hear that I’m disabled,” he said the other day when I downloaded my groceries from the car. In the first months after diagnosis, T often fell into a downward spiral of forecasts Dr. Google, the second worst reading and scrolling through scenarios scleroderma-induced deformation images. Now he reads as doctors in Italy, can not be treated in a position of all have have to ration care, more likely to survive, while letting others die. He wonders if he could be considered one of lost causes into account. As a correspondent based in Hong Kong in the early 2000s, I covered the epidemic of SARS and avian flu. I spent several weeks in Liberia, at the height of the Ebola epidemic. I reported on cholera, malaria, scabies and Zika. The disease does not scare me. But the idea exposed to paralyze my husband COVID-19 Suddenly, hospitals and doctors’ offices, which is a source of healing and comfort for the past four years have now are a threat. The immunosuppressive T assumes scleroderma control makes it vulnerable to any kind of infection. The crown should have a big day in his lungs scars and vulnerable. When your stomach starts to bleed, we will have to evaluate the infection against the need for surgery risk. That is, if there’s room in the hospital at this point. We all have our Dr. Google led downward spirals. Only this time, comes from the simple reading of the news. Please send any suggestions, cables and [email protected] stories. Image copyright Gabriel chamber for TIME
I saw wars and epidemics to explain. But now that I have a partner immunosuppressed, the Crown Me Truly I fear
