Throughout February, I would sporadically see photos on Instagram of people wearing face masks in Asian countries that used hashtags such as #protectyourself. When Coronavirus hit a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington (the town where I grew up) and killed 19 elderly patients, the whispers turned to grumbles in the media.
During this same time period, the virus spread to California, with a handful of cases in the Bay area and one case in Orange County where I live. I traveled to Texas for my sister’s baby shower in early February and was amazed by the number of face masks I saw during a connection in the San Jose airport. Part of me wondered if I should be concerned and part of me wondered whether face masks are simply a tool to stimulate fear in the general public.
But other than the unsettling hour I spent in San Jose, I still wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t yet know that the virus was mostly mild for young people and statistically more dangerous for adults over the age of 65. Had I realized all this, I might have been slightly more concerned for my own dad and Micah’s mom who were living and working in Washington in the heart of the outbreak.
Instead, I was down in California dealing with my own medical issues in my third trimester of pregnancy. I was diagnosed with complete placenta previa at 18 weeks and each follow-up ultrasound had failed to give me the good news I wanted. At my January ultrasound, it was still a complete previa, and at my February ultrasound, it still hadn’t moved. At every prenatal appointment, I was reminded to rush to labor and delivery if I started hemorrhaging, and the doctor was beginning to prep me for a scheduled c-section at 36-37 weeks. I was told to increase my iron intake for the loss of blood I would face in surgery.
At home, I was doing everything I could to resolve the previa. Yoga poses recommended by doulas. Acupuncture appointments recommended by midwives (and Google). I ordered mysterious Chinese herbs from Amazon and finally resorted to doing water handstands in the pool at the YMCA because it had helped my friend flip her breech baby and I was desperate. The c-section was scheduled for March 19th, but I had one last ultrasound the week before to check the previa one more time.
At this point, the virus had spread more widely in California. We were beginning to receive weekly updates from my work and Zianne’s school district about whether or not a nearby Costa Mesa government building was going to be used as a quarantine center for all of Orange County. Too many people protested the quarantine facility, and the court ordered a stay on the issue. Every email we received ended with: “Remember, the Orange County Health Care Agency has rated the risk of exposure in Orange County at this time as low.” Within two weeks, the same schools sending these emails would be completely shut down…
