It all started last Thursday morning. The pharmacy received the flu vaccine stock and Mate showed me the COVID Level plan released by the government. I don’t watch the news, not with four kids and the distrust in the media. Everything I learn about the world I learn through people, and the COVID Level plan was given to me by my husband.
I use all my efforts to quit my duties on Thursday mornings and I spent it with painting my faces. Not portraits, I shouldn’t call them portraits as they are faces to me. I was not going to think of anything and I couldn’t have been wiser.
By the afternoon, I entered the pharmacy in the frenzy of vaccination. New processes were set up, all preparations used and streamlined on the go, and by Saturday evening I vaccinated more than a 100 people. By Monday morning the pharmacy run out of the vaccine stock, that’s 600 vaccines deliver if I remember right.
By Sunday I said to my husband we should not let the kids go to school but he correctly brushed this off. We bring home everything and more from the pharmacy.
By Monday we knew it was the last day of school. I asked the kids to say goodbye to their friends.
I don’t work on Mondays. I visited the video editor to get ahead with my fragrance video. He does not like the video and wants me to get a new one done from scratch. I’ll get this finished, if for nothing else, but to be as good as my word and pay the guy who shot it for me, and go from there. But we are working with the understanding that he thinks this video is definitely not brilliant. Whatever.
By Tuesday, at Level3, the pharmacy was a completely different place. Tapes, closed doors, everyone arriving too early, adrenaline filled, ready but unsure what to expect. Hundreds of faxes, a handful of original scripts. Major change in workload bring major new problems. By this time I am too short of breath from asthma worsening for the past few weeks, and the GP surgery doesn’t answer their phone. I try to stay quiet, I try to be useful, I try to stay out from organising stuff, and I try to suppress my puns that emerge when I am ready to be somewhere else. I am so short of breath that I walk out the back door for fresh air and just cry. Even when I walk in, the first “Are you allright?” sets me going again, a little more in the office, the boss and the accountant cry with me. I tell them it’s only my cancelled surgeries, the pain. After this, I am moderately useful, and I can only hope, moderately annoying. I keep on processing the hundreds of scripts, mindlessly.
I arrive late to the school. The principal holds me up and waves a piece of paper at me: the dentists x-rayed one of my kids without consent, and as I see it, without reason. The piece of paper was their justification, scanty as we both agreed. It is not the time though. She tells me, tomorrow’s the last day, three o’clock sharp. I smile. I have no idea what tomorrow brings. Today, my husband finished 33 hours of work within 3 days. I can’t breath. No call from the doctors. I smile, holding baby.
In the call 1373, they help if the virus makes you feel upset, and even though it helps now my neighbor seems to be in in all my private health issues. My oldest has UTI symptoms.
Wednesday morning at work, everybody has come hours earlier than normal. My early arrival is late. Workmates bravely assure each other that they got ahead of work. The fax machine switches on at 8,20. I type until 11.20.
Only interruption is a call from the nurse. When I hang up, I have a plan, a Prednisone script and something for my oldest daughter’s UTI. This latter thankfully we don’t need anymore, but the Prednisone hits me by noon and the world starts spinning. The boss questions me whether I should go home but I decline.
When I pick up the kids in time, the preschool donates us food. My husband asks me to have a few days off and when I agree, he almost cries. 44 hours in 4 days for him. I call work, they are not happy. My husband tells me to stop worrying about money just stay home. I listen to him with a dizzy head and no oxygen, the babysitter comes down with a tummy bug. I’m alone. Baby doesn’t sleep.
Thursday husband hits on 50 hours work in 4 and a half days. My breathing gets better, the kids start their first day in isolation. We dance.
Friday we try to get our bearings, try to rest, eat, tidy. The three oldest kids end the day sleeping in the same bed. I know this is the life I need, less noise, less claustrophobic time, we’ll learn each other and Hungarian. No visitors to judge.
Saturday morning we speak to the other end of the world and try the newly set up second-third-fourth-hand spa. It’s lovely and baby poos in it. We shower, then have spaghetti for lunch and bring in the bunny to be cuddled. I can breath now.