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Preparing for Oahu
Jun. 9th, 2020 07:31 pmSo we're going to Oahu next week. It was always on our plans for this year, in part to keep Kimberly from losing his frequent flier miles with Hawaiian (though she mysteriously lost them anyway, somewhere prior to our move out here!). And we're now doing it, but we'd never expected the circumstances.
The first circumstance, obviously, being COVID-19. Which will likely make Honolulu and Waikiki beautiful, empty, inconvenient, and a bit scary all at the same time.
The second circumstance being Kimberly's seizures, which have dramatically worsened since we moved.
The precipitating event is that Kimberly not only got her seizure study finally scheduled, but they moved it up. (Original date was June 29th, new date is June 15th.)
When I talk about all patients except COVID-19 patients being thrown under the bus, this is one of my main reasons. We've been trying to get Kimberly into this study, probably since February. It's now June. Much of the time the hospital was just refusing to take patients from off-island. Kimberly is now going to be literally be their first off-island patient since the shutdown. They actually had to write new rules to accommodate her.
(I'm aware of people in even worse circumstances elsewhere being denied medical care that's literally life-saving due to COVID-19. I hope there's going to be a lot of rethinking of our ethics and values when this is all over, because we're failing in a lot of ways.)
I've already got our plane tickets and my hotel reservations. There was actually much question over all of this. At one point the plan was for me to fly to Oahu, take Kimberly to the hospital, then fly back before repeating the whole thing 3-7 days later to pick her up. At the time, the hospital wasn't allowing any visitors and the whole state was so locked down that I wouldn't have been able to do anything in Oahu, so there was no reason to spend the $1000 or so to stay there.
But the hospital started allowing visitors (only one at a time, only once a day), then the seizure unit (the "Emu" unit, apparently because someone likes flightless birds) disallowed it, then our super-star clerk out there got Kimberly special permissions to have me visit.
I should say that Kimberly's seizures are also the reason for all these weird contortions. She gets severely confused and upset when she's having the seizures at their worse, so we weren't sure she could definitively make it to the hospital on her own, if the timing was unlucky. We were actually planning to hire an escort for her (maybe that's not the best choice of words) to make sure she got to the hospital, before the restrictions started to lift. But now I can escort her, and also visit her enough to hopefully ensure she's not scared.
As it happens, June 15th is also the last day of the 14-day inter-island quarantine. Does that mean people who fly that day get locked up for 14 days and the next day not at all? We're not sure. But we both have passes that say we have a medical exemption, so we're hoping there are no problems. (Well, it won't be an issue for Kimberly, because she'll go straight to the hospital and stay there: I'm hoping it won't be a problem.)
So that's the plan. First flight to Oahu on next Monday, get Kimberly to the EMU by 9 or 9.30, do as much as I can to make sure she's OK, and then I have a hotel room at 3. (What does one do in a city that's still theoretically sheltering in place, despite almost everything opening up, for maybe 3 or so hours, while dragging around luggage? I'm not sure. But I once dragged my luggage around Toronto on a bike, so I'm sure it'll work out.)
The plan for the rest of next week is then: start each day with a half-day of work for Blockchain Commons in the morning (if Chris wants the time), get lunch, hang out with Kimberly in the early afternoon, spend some time in Oahu in the late afternoon, then go back to my hotel. I expect it's going to be an RWOT-style tiring and busy week.
And did I mention that COVID cases are going up again in Oahu? Joy. After cases wobbling between 0 and 2 or so for a month we've had twenty or so cases in the last four days. Current speculation is that it's graduation parties and Memorial Day parties. Really, that level shouldn't be a concern to randomly get it, but it's so frustrating that the government won't even tell us what neighborhoods the virus is stalking, let alone if cases are clusters or not. At least in Hawaii that's one of their biggest failures (the other being not rolling back the restrictions when most of the islands dropped to zero cases, particularly Kauai.)
So, five and a half months after our arrival, we're leaving for a bit. Actually, that was always the plan too. I figured I'd get to vary up my island living with RWOT trips twice a year, but clearly that's not happening right now either.
Weird times.
The first circumstance, obviously, being COVID-19. Which will likely make Honolulu and Waikiki beautiful, empty, inconvenient, and a bit scary all at the same time.
The second circumstance being Kimberly's seizures, which have dramatically worsened since we moved.
The precipitating event is that Kimberly not only got her seizure study finally scheduled, but they moved it up. (Original date was June 29th, new date is June 15th.)
When I talk about all patients except COVID-19 patients being thrown under the bus, this is one of my main reasons. We've been trying to get Kimberly into this study, probably since February. It's now June. Much of the time the hospital was just refusing to take patients from off-island. Kimberly is now going to be literally be their first off-island patient since the shutdown. They actually had to write new rules to accommodate her.
(I'm aware of people in even worse circumstances elsewhere being denied medical care that's literally life-saving due to COVID-19. I hope there's going to be a lot of rethinking of our ethics and values when this is all over, because we're failing in a lot of ways.)
I've already got our plane tickets and my hotel reservations. There was actually much question over all of this. At one point the plan was for me to fly to Oahu, take Kimberly to the hospital, then fly back before repeating the whole thing 3-7 days later to pick her up. At the time, the hospital wasn't allowing any visitors and the whole state was so locked down that I wouldn't have been able to do anything in Oahu, so there was no reason to spend the $1000 or so to stay there.
But the hospital started allowing visitors (only one at a time, only once a day), then the seizure unit (the "Emu" unit, apparently because someone likes flightless birds) disallowed it, then our super-star clerk out there got Kimberly special permissions to have me visit.
I should say that Kimberly's seizures are also the reason for all these weird contortions. She gets severely confused and upset when she's having the seizures at their worse, so we weren't sure she could definitively make it to the hospital on her own, if the timing was unlucky. We were actually planning to hire an escort for her (maybe that's not the best choice of words) to make sure she got to the hospital, before the restrictions started to lift. But now I can escort her, and also visit her enough to hopefully ensure she's not scared.
As it happens, June 15th is also the last day of the 14-day inter-island quarantine. Does that mean people who fly that day get locked up for 14 days and the next day not at all? We're not sure. But we both have passes that say we have a medical exemption, so we're hoping there are no problems. (Well, it won't be an issue for Kimberly, because she'll go straight to the hospital and stay there: I'm hoping it won't be a problem.)
So that's the plan. First flight to Oahu on next Monday, get Kimberly to the EMU by 9 or 9.30, do as much as I can to make sure she's OK, and then I have a hotel room at 3. (What does one do in a city that's still theoretically sheltering in place, despite almost everything opening up, for maybe 3 or so hours, while dragging around luggage? I'm not sure. But I once dragged my luggage around Toronto on a bike, so I'm sure it'll work out.)
The plan for the rest of next week is then: start each day with a half-day of work for Blockchain Commons in the morning (if Chris wants the time), get lunch, hang out with Kimberly in the early afternoon, spend some time in Oahu in the late afternoon, then go back to my hotel. I expect it's going to be an RWOT-style tiring and busy week.
And did I mention that COVID cases are going up again in Oahu? Joy. After cases wobbling between 0 and 2 or so for a month we've had twenty or so cases in the last four days. Current speculation is that it's graduation parties and Memorial Day parties. Really, that level shouldn't be a concern to randomly get it, but it's so frustrating that the government won't even tell us what neighborhoods the virus is stalking, let alone if cases are clusters or not. At least in Hawaii that's one of their biggest failures (the other being not rolling back the restrictions when most of the islands dropped to zero cases, particularly Kauai.)
So, five and a half months after our arrival, we're leaving for a bit. Actually, that was always the plan too. I figured I'd get to vary up my island living with RWOT trips twice a year, but clearly that's not happening right now either.
Weird times.