Hindsight is 2020
M, Sailor, Pensacola, FL
For us having lived on a boat for 4 years at one time and almost 5 the second time when we were cruising, we learned a lot aboutneach other, we learned what one can do and what the other one can do and what we could do together so it was pretty much the same thing once we got back into the mode. Initially it was, well, I don’t think it was fear, I think it was confusion because there was so much information out there that people didn’t understand but we adapted really quite well. We got into a routine where we had certain things to do. I avoided going to the grocery store for probably 3 weeks or so instead of going every two or three times a week sometimes. B, actually in March of 2020, when we came back from the St Johns river trip, he was very very ill and probably had COVID. We didn’t want to go to the ER as at that time the ERs were overflowing. We decided that if he did have it and we went, he’d be exposed because at that time, a lot of people weren’t wearing masks at the beginning. We each learned to occupy ourselves and also as a couple. It didn’t take us that much time—as it did some. Some people became depressed because they were isolated. We never went through that because having been on the sail boats, it was just the two of us anyway. Isolation was a problem for a lot of people because they couldn’t figure out how to occupy their time especially those that worked. We managed really quite well. We could go outside of course. Wearing a mask of course was a chore as we didn’t go into public that often but we did and we adapted to it quite easily. Personally, I learned I could make shift things to do, things that I should have done and some things that didn’t need to be done but I did. I kept myself occupied that way. Of course I watched a lot of news but I also read a lot of news during that first year, but basically everything became a routine. That was about it. B’s illness was really quite scary though.
Dr. B, Doctor & Sailor, Pensacola, FL
I’m not sure it was really much different than our normal life. Being elderly our lives of course has changed a lot: a lot less physical activity and more intellectual activity, like reading and such. So my life didn’t change a great deal. I did, however, in March probably have COVID and I had already been researching it from a medical standpoint. I felt at first that the Chinese situation was far worse than it had been presented and was probably COVID had been around a lot longer and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had reached the United States before it was reported and so that was a factor in thinking about what we were going to do as far as interactions with others. We made a decision to take our boats onto a cruise knowing that there was some risk. The other thing is that we both keep N95 masks around which we use for wood-working and sanding and such so we had a supply. We started using them regularly. However we were with friends and one of our friends is from a rural area in Wisconsin and we thought well, there’s no risk here so he came on board and was very close to us, across the dining table for dinner for several nights and he had a cough and a cold and I think I probably got COVID from him. He had been exposed to school-children and people who had been traveling a great deal so I think that’s where it came from. It was sort of frightening because we were on our boat when the symptoms first happened and being a physician I carry medication with me and started myself on high does of steroids almost immediately and started on lasiks because I felt like I was going into congestive heart-failure—it may not have been: it may have been COVID but we came home as quickly as we could. On the first night home, I woke up at 3 in the morning and I was coughing up bloody sputum and I thought, well, I’m going to have to go into the ER tonight. So I got up and wrote my last letters, as I have done several times in the past and put them in a place. But I began to get a little better and throughout that day I improved. So I didn’t want to take the risk of going to the ER and either giving it to somebody else or if I don’t have it, getting it! Both of us, we both had to go to the ER during that time: M had a bad infection, which she got from the water. She ended up having to get what is called picklinia and …….. and we had to give her infusions every 8 hours at home of antibiotics because she had sepsis. Public health help was a question: I’ve worked with nurses all my life but a person coming into my home, they had a mask, we had a mask but I was concerned about someone coming into my home which I would not normally have been. That was another factor. Another factor was going to medical appointments and at that time isolation techniques were not good and so we were go to the hospital and the hospital would have plastic curtains, just sheet-vinyl plastic along the corridors and these big ducts going outside to an evacuating system outside creating a negative pressure—and I thought well, how good is this: not that good! We actually wore gloves a lot for the first few months. We just didn’t go out that much. We are prepared for hurricanes here so we have enough food for 3 months. I think we relied on principles that we have developed in our lives where we are very self-sufficient. When we cruise we often have 2 or 3 months supply of food and everything we need on a boat, for crossing an ocean for example which may take 30 days or so and it’s the same with our home so we were basically self-sufficient, so we didn’t have to go out for the first few weeks. I think we’re more concerned with the risks than most of our friends because we know what a death is like with COVID and it’s a terrible way to die. You’re semi or unconscious, you’re on a respirator. Everyone around you are all masked—it’s basically in-human, impersonal and you lose that personal touch when you get into that situation so it is a terrible way to die. I think that was the thing that hit me about COVID. I feel so badly for people. My ex-wife had dementia and died and she died in isolation in a nursing home and her children couldn’t see her. They did arrange a few weeks before she died for a brief outdoor visit but at the time of her death, they weren’t with her. That was a very difficult adjustment for many people. The other thing is that I became more critical of my friends who wouldn’t mask and who wouldn’t distance and that still occurs and there are people who still take untoward chances. Some people even got infected and didn’t take precautions to protect their spouse. I was a little bit more disillusioned with my fellow-man. I’m not sure I can say that I learned much about myself per se, because I feel like I have had to deal with these types of things in the past. The fact that we were self-sufficient at the outset made things slightly easier for us but then we had a hurricane on top of that! Sally happened in December of 2020 exactly 60 years after Ivan and it followed the same path with the eye of both hurricanes went over our house and there was massive destruction on our street here. Most of our friends lost their vehicles and the flood water came up very quickly and as we’re higher up here than our neighbors we took in a lot of people and that compounded things with COVID at the same time that we had the hurricane. Would we have done anything differently with the hurricane if there was no COVID? Probably not. We asked people who lived with us for a few days to mask up when they first came in and then you kind of relax those rules after a bit—ok—they’re not coughing or sick.