Die Suspensus

Uncertain sky.

A former coworker and longtime colleague of mine started posting images of a canceled NCAA tournament venue midweek. By the time he had flown a surreal and lonely flight home, every state in the US, except for West Virginia (making them the winner of some appropriate gallows humor playing off of the March Madness brackets), had at least one confirmed case of COVID-19.

The same day, it was decided that a work-related event our department had spent at least six months preparing for would be postponed with the hope that it would be rescheduled later in the year.

Upon arriving home, I was the recipient of a message to team captains for an annual fundraising event I’ve been involved with for the past few years that the event, while not canceled per se, would be formally postponed to some undetermined future date.

The weekend started with a rocky start of going out into a somewhat dystopian landscape to “load up” on food staples and pet food. Streets were oddly quiet, but every store was busy, with lines of people buying inordinate amounts of food, etc. Rumors abounded at every location, longer lines at other stores, limits on how much toilet paper each customer was allowed to buy, certain stores holding back on restocking their shelves, other stores working all-night shifts to keep the shelves stocked, obscure locations where one might still find hand sanitizer.

That evening, my wife’s Saturday evening was interrupted by a last-minute meeting with the school district staff where she works to determine how and under what conditions they would consider closing all schools for at least two weeks, but potentially longer.

While COVID-19 was slowly leaking into parts of Asia and Europe, I was hiking with my dogs in southern Idaho’s rugged Owyhee rangeland the second weekend of January. Halfway through our hike, I managed to break my leg in some tricky terrain and some four miles from my rig. At that moment, every preconceived plan for the future snapped with the same ferocity that my fibula gave way to the formula of millennia-old lava plus gravity plus momentum on it. Within an hour, virtually everything in my life went into a holding pattern or was abruptly canceled, including a week-long trip to the Bahamas only two weeks away at the time.

While I don’t relish the idea of still recovering from a broken leg while a global pandemic kicks off — it’s a particular sense of vulnerability — at the same time, I’m pretty well adjusted to having to exercise some patience and comfortable with uncertainty.

The curious thing from my perspective now, observing what seems to be the entire world stopping and scrambling to adapt, is the realization that in some ways, I was already in the state everyone else seems to be falling into. While I don’t relish the idea of still recovering from a broken leg while a global pandemic kicks off — it’s a particular sense of vulnerability — at the same time, I’m pretty well adjusted to having to exercise some patience and comfortable with uncertainty.

Having said that, I’ve also been especially focused on recovering from my injury and have taken considerable measures to ensure that I can return to the lifestyle I enjoyed previously. I’ve always been a fairly driven individual and I typically make a concerted effort to bounce back from unpleasant circumstances or setbacks. This most recent situation has been no different — tracking my progress versus advice gleaned from physical therapy blogs, pushing my physical comfort and enduring injured leg exercise routines, limiting my pain medication intake and avoiding anything in my diet that might work against while adding supplements that I normally wouldn’t include in my daily regime.

So this is where I find myself differing with some of the reactions I’m observing now, while also acknowledging that COVID-19 is a far greater unknown to most people versus the knowledge base that exists around how to recover from a broken bone. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unknowns around COVID-19, I sense too much hesitation, too much reservation, too much distrust that this too shall pass. In my opinion, the best thing to do is prepare, and even push for, that day to arrive as quickly as possible. It’s not enough to suspend the day. We must spend the days in limbo preparing for when an acceptable level of normalcy can resume. Or better yet, permanently change the most vulnerable things.

As a fun, quick aside, here are some things I hope will change as an outcome of this public safety exercise:

1. The end of handshaking in professional environments. If there’s one thing futuristic science fiction has taught us, its that this western custom goes away. I believe this is the tipping point to getting there. Good riddance. If bros and bikers want to cling to it, knock yourself out.
2. Remote working as an expected, viable option for any profession that isn’t customer-facing or hands-on product making. A lot of companies who have been clinging to antiquated management styles and have been stuck in a rut about providing (expensive!) brick and mortar cube farms for their employees are being forced to reconsider. Too bad it took a pandemic to get them to wake up.
3. While we’re embracing remote working, let’s embrace remote learning. Current events are a stark reminder that the public education system is also a relatively cheap daycare service for the majority of US parents. Rather than create a situation that threatens to bring the economy to a screeching stop and forces parents to have to decide whether or not they can afford to stay home, how about we get serious about a local, state, and national online system similar to what most universities have now that can be a powerful supplement or even replacement to children attending physical schools? Wondering how school children would be monitored or taken care of during the day? See the previous point. Mom or dad will likely be at home also. Both of your parents work outside the home? Go to school. It’s not complicated. Things are so bad, that you can’t? Well, the same is probably going to apply to the parents as well, which brings right back to where we are, except more organized.
4. If the reason everything in the public square is being canceled as a means of slowing the inevitable spread of COVID-19 to not overwhelm our current healthcare system . . . Maybe we should also be reevaluating the idea that non-surgical medical support is a destination instead of a service that goes to the patient. Yes, I believe remote and in-person house calls are the future.

Maybe we should also be reevaluating the idea that non-surgical medical support is a destination instead of a service that goes to the patient.

Here, in a week or two, I’m anticipating the joy of no longer having to wear an Aircast boot. Of course, this will also mean embracing the daily tortures of physical therapy and rebuilding muscle and movement that I have temporarily lost. I’m looking forward to it, despite knowing that as with every stage of my recovery, there have been very dark, even painful, days. However, the thought of doing things like relieving my dogs of their current state of confusion and spending time with them again in a way that is both more familiar and enjoyable makes me determined to get there as quickly as I can.

We should all be rushing toward pulling back the veil of uncertainty with collective courage and resolve. Not because we can eliminate it, but because the rewards for facing our fear of the unknown will always outweigh the price we will pay for being swallowed by it.