But it put a serious concern on whether or not I'd be allowed to travel to my Chemo session on Tuesday - after much debate and discussion, I received permission provided I drive myself and wipe down / disinfect the car completely when I return.
The hospital was CRAZY busy when I arrived - even the small chemo room off the doctor's office had another patient (which has only happened once before). He finished up as I was beginning, and then as I was finishing up another man was brought in to the second bed. He was fully masked, but coughing and weasing horribly. I think the nurses must have caught my terrified eyes because they immediately threw up a screen between us and I finished without incident. Pretty normal day of chemo, actually.
On the way back, I stopped at the pharmacy for pain meds (since the pain has been pretty awful the last two weeks) and then at the local grocery store for some fresh greens. My iron levels are super low and I've been struggling with it - plus I was running out of eggs, which is my guilty pleasure in the mornings. The other girls asked if I'd pick up a few things - fresh fruit, mostly - because we're all basically stuck with MREs and whatever else anyone brings by to the barracks. And here's where things went wrong....
I picked up some fresh peaches and tomatoes - but when I went to have them weighed, the guy wasn't masked up - so I signaled him to please put his mask up (he didn't speak English, I don't speak Albanian) and he shook his head no and laughed it off. Keep in mind, it's actually the law to mask up in Kosovo - but nobody seems to heed it. Kosovo is currently the hot spot of eastern Europe in terms of new cases, not surprisingly.
I motioned again for him to mask up and he again refused, so I went and found the manager and asked her if she would weigh them for me since she was masked. She came over and....well, even though I don't understand Albanian I kind of got the gist of the verbal ass whipping he was receiving. He weighed my fruit, then spent the next ten minutes unmasked following me around the store cursing me out in Albanian while I grabbed the few items on my list.
Then Celia's boyfriend Eddie showed up to drop off a few bags from her house for me to deliver (since base is still locked down tight) - and let me tell you, the sight of this tall, dark, intimidating, muscled guy giving him the stink eye of death for harassing me was all it took. (Which is hilarious, because he's seriously the nicest guy ever!)
I packed up my groceries and headed back to base, where I was interrogated stringently before being allowed back on - and I found this very comforting to know that the lockdown is being taken seriously.
Headed back to the room and returned to self-isolation, but with the added bonus of being able to socialize more than six feet apart with the three other women stuck on the same porch. Four completely different people with different backgrounds, experience, likes, dislikes - but thrown together in a common situation and finding our commonalities and strengths.
And as if this update isn't boring enough - I'm writing this on Friday, which is normally the day I hit the wall and beg for death because of the pain - and yet, I'm feeling pretty good. So I'm going to enjoy this super boring update - and this wonderfully dull week - and celebrate that there are only TWO more weeks of chemo left. Let's pray for more boring weeks like this! (Even though they make a very dull blog)
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