Life on lockdown with my mom

By Mary Lou Fulton

The coronavirus crisis really hit home as I read media accounts of Italian doctors forced to play God in overwhelmed hospitals.  Younger, healthier people with the virus received treatment - a bed, oxygen, respirators.  Older people might just be left to die. 

My mom is one of those people who could get written off. She’s 78 and on kidney dialysis that she performs nightly at home. Her immune system is shot, and it took her six months to recover from a terrible bout of shingles just two years ago.

So if she’s going to stay feisty and flirty and ready to play the slots when the casinos reopen, we can’t roll the dice.

I’ve told my mom it isn’t safe for her to leave her Boyle Heights home except for doctor appointments. A week ago, I quit my full-time job, intending to start a new chapter focused on writing and music making. Now my job is protecting us from the virus.

I’m mindful that any move I make could bring infection into her home, so I have new routines. When I’m out, I wear gloves and carry wipes to clean door handles and shopping carts. I get to the grocery store when it opens, hoping to avoid crowds. I’ve read that heat can kill the virus, so I toss my hoodie into the dryer before going into the house.

Once inside, I wash my hands and wipe down what I’ve touched — doorknobs, a light switch, my phone, the credit card I used at the store.

As each day brings more restrictions, I’m thinking ahead. Instead of waiting a few weeks for my mom’s next dialysis-supply delivery, I drove 90 minutes to the warehouse to pick up as many supplies as I could fit in my Kia Soul.

I take my mom’s temperature twice a day, and mine, too. So far, so good. But that could change, and if it does, my mom’s odds aren’t so good. I have Facebook friends who say they aren’t worried because if you’re younger than 50, there’s just a 1% chance the virus will kill you, based on Chinese data. For my mom and others in their 70s, it’s almost one in 10. For folks in their 80s, it’s 18%.

So I’m asking the young and healthy to think about the ripple effect of every choice they make. Stay home, keep your distance, reduce the spread of the virus so that hospitals will have the capacity to care for older people instead of pushing them aside. 

You can count on me to protect your mom. Will you help me protect mine?

First published in The Los Angeles Times:  Dispatches from the pandemic: Love on hold, fragile parents and reluctant heroism