Re:SARS
Panic mode…..: A Fever? I could not believe it! I took it again and I think I got the same reading – but I forgot to shake the mercury back (and old thermometer), the next reading was back to normal. The other readings from then on were normal. A random fluctuation? Most probably I placed the thermometer on my computer or some other warm object…..who knows…..
In any case that was the last major event in my quarantine and I returned to work. Work…..you could hardly tell I had left. My scanner was untouched (and I really mean “untouched”), and the truck I had been driving looked like it had just been parked. I was obviously treated like a leprosy case, but I was expecting this. The hospital was in lockdown and we did not deliver there anymore (an employee came and picked it up – they had nothing to do…..only SARS patients in that major league hospital…..).
But work had changed drastically when I returned. I now carried a mask, gloves, and anti viral spray for my hands and equipment (the gloves were useless). I still had eight buildings that contained walk-in medical centers and G.P. offices/pharmacy – lucky me…..and all in and around “ground zero” (as the hospital was called). SARS patients would walk in to these clinics regularly, quarantining staff who were not masked and gloved, or scaring the ones that were. You could always tell – the ambulance and police car gave it away.
I would spend three and a half hours in these buildings. Never taking the elevator (someone could cough) under the pretext that sick people do not take the stairs – doctors and nurses seemed to follow that same advice. It was suffocating wearing that mask and running around and scaring people not used to the sight. But every one in the health care profession was wearing them. Hot looking girls in tight skirts would wear them (kind of sexy I thought…..even thought about someone coming up with designer pattern masks, etc…..). If I heard a cough in a office, I would turn around and come back later (droplets could enter eyes etc.). Under every fire exit door to the stairs was a little pile of tissues that people left (not wanting to touch possible SARS contaminated handles). I talked to drug company reps in parking lots about spraying vs gloves etc. – totally unreal….. You were afraid of prepared foods and I lived off chocolate bars since I could eat them without touching it with my hands – boring after a while….. But the worst part of this was the cowardism and racism seen in the health care field and general population as a whole…..