For 4 months now, every few weeks, I’m getting something that at first I thought might be a spider bite. The first day, I just notice slight itching in a location like calf or neck or elbow. The next day, there will be a group of what looks like large bug bites. The group is randomly spaced with 3-5 bumps. By day 3, the swelling is at least 6 inches across and the itching becomes intense. It reminds me of how bites can really swell on a baby or someone allergic to them. On day 4, there appears a tons of small blisters on the top of each bump. I try to keep them covered with a bandaid so I won’t scratch but if I bump one, clear fluid pours out from under the bandaid. By day 5 the swelling starts going down and if it got opened, it turns into a scab and scars. If it didn’t open, and I keep cortisone cream on it, it goes away in about 3 more days. Dh has vacuumed and shampooed all of the carpets and furniture. No one else in the family has gotten a single one. Once they heal, they don’t appear again for a couple of weeks so I’m always hopeful that they are gone for good. Today I had a video appointment with my primary care doctor and I showed her some new ones on my neck. She said that they are definitely not bug bites. She called in a strong steroid cream and said if I get more, she wants a dermatologist to take a look. Im going to have one of my kids photograph this new cluster every day of the cycle so I have something to show the dermatologist. I just thought I’d check in with the hive and see if anyone as ever heard of anything like this before.

I saw one of my friends this weekend, who has recently recovered from COVID. He is a nurse, but more administrative, so he has been working from home for months. He got called in to work a long shift at the hospital because there was just no one else available. He was double masked but said he was so exhausted by the end that he must have touched the outside of his gloves before taking off his masks and somehow gotten it on his face. A few days later, he woke with the smallest tickle in his throat. He immediately texted his wife and daughters not to come into that part of the house. No one else who lives there got it. He said he didn’t even have an extra bad case, but it was the worst 11 days of his life. Thankfully, he is almost completely recovered now.

My kids have been enjoying playing switch games online with different groups of friends. This isn’t something they did much before the pandemic, because we prefer socializing in person, but it has really been a fun temporary substitute.

My children are very close, even the ones with large age differences. I’m both happy about and proud of that fact because my family of origin was full of the good kid/bad kid dynamic. I do find that some of the relationships with my adult kids are just easier than others. Sometimes I suspect that one of my kids has twinges of jealousy about how close everyone else is. I feel like she wants everyone to be close to her, but is a little threatened when everything doesn’t include her and they have separate relationships and activities that don’t always include her. I have to watch closely or she will plant little seeds of discord which I will not tolerate. I don’t know why she is like that. Dh says it is just a different kind of personality.

Good news here. My son recovered from his illness after 12 hours, and his COVID test just came back negative. I’m glad we can go back to the pool on Tuesday.

You are absolutely right. After I posted, I thought, “Wait, that example is closer to the opposite!”

If your sister is hosting at her own house, I think it is within her rights to include or exclude whomever she wants. I would start out saying that. However, it is within your right to not attend. If it was my sister, I would tell her that I understand her grief and I’m always just a phone call away if she needs to talk. I also understand how anniversaries and birthday celebrations bring the grief rushing back to the forefront and there are absolutely no hard feelings if she wants to celebrate with your mom without you and your daughter, but you and your daughter will both be ready to attend again when sister feels strong enough to include you both. Maybe you and your daughter can have a separate little time with your mom.

A friend has a 14 year old in a neighboring school district. The child is bright, dedicated and a high achiever. My friend was so upset that the district quit offering honors English. Her friends on FB assured her that honors classes are horribly outdated and unfair and a vehicle for maintaining systematic oppression. They were all very happy and encouraged by the fact that the child can no longer have access to honors classes. Fortunately, my friend has her undergraduate degree in English, so they are just adding in extra resources at home. Before kids, I taught in public schools with very low income populations. I know how horrific the inequality really is. But I don’t understand how holding some kids back directly results in better outcomes for their less fortunate peers. It is like my telling my kid to finish her breakfast because children are starving in Africa.

This is why I just can’t buy the assertion that schools are not a significant factor in the spread of the virus. I believe that the benefits may outweigh the risks, but I know people who think that in person schooling doesn’t contribute to the surge at all. I don’t really trust the information we are getting from schools, based on what my friends who are teachers tell me. I feel like I’m edging toward conspiracy theories myself because there seems to be so much agreement that in person schooling is not an issue at all.

One of my friends was very sick with COVID. His daughter (high school senior) is one of our assistant swim coaches. My friend, who is a nurse, quarantined in a separate wing of their home, but even so, we paid his daughter for 10 days past the last day of her dad’s quarantine. We are in a similar situation now ourselves. My son threw up for 12 hours on Tuesday. On Wednesday he felt completely better. He never had any fever. We were told that if he didn’t get tested, we would all need to quarantine for 10 days. If he got tested and was negative, we could return to the pool 24 hours after his last symptom. If he tested positive, we need to stay home at least 10 days after his 10 days of isolation. He got tested yesterday, but the results take 2-6 days to get back. If they take 6 days, then we will be at 9 days by the time we even get results. Dh said something about California wanting workers to stay home 14 days even with a negative test result due to false negatives. I need to do some research about that.

My kid switched from lexapro to Zoloft because the lexapro was making her gain weight and giving her awful indigestion. She is doing much better after the switch.

I did homeschool a neighbor’s child for years. It was good for all of us. But he got folded into my homeschool at my house using the curriculum I picked out. The person in the ad seems to be looking for something very different. My first thought was, “I bet her son is having behavioral issues.” They might come from mom’s inexperience homeschooling. There might be an underlying issue, but their probably won’t be any quick fixes for this family.

I gave him the zofran as soon as he got up. He threw up the dissolving tablet so I told him to take another one. When he was still throwing up, I gave him phenagran and when he threw that up, the doctor prescribed a suppository called Compro, which I hadn’t heard of before. I do think it slowed down his vomiting and now he is now able to sleep. I’ve never understood why anti nausea drugs seem to all be prescription. Growing up, we had something, maybe Phenagran suppositories in the door of the refrigerator in case someone was really unable to keep anything down. When I had my own kids, I asked the pediatrician about getting something like that and she said,”Oh, we don’t do that anymore.” I’m so glad that as a cancer patient, I have a life time supply of antiemetics. Maybe that is my Fortunately.

My 24 year old son woke up at noon with uncontrollable vomiting. He works nights, but hasn’t been to work since Friday. By 2:00 he was lying on the bathroom floor moaning. I was able to get a tele appointment with his doctor who said he is at risk for needing to go to the ER for fluids because he is so dehydrated and being underweight doesn’t help. I just got him some suppositories to hopefully stop the vomiting and then maybe he can hold down some chicken broth or pedialyte. We will try to schedule a COVID test tomorrow. His doctor said that we all need to quarantine on the assumption that is what he has until we get a negative test result.

For sure the kid picks the menu here. Pretty much one of mine always makes Mexican food and the other always makes pasta.

I really agree with this. My dad died from the same kind of cancer that I have, so when I was diagnosed I already had an account on that forum. I even remembered my password, which is a minor miracle. LOL. This made me much less afraid, because I already knew so much, and I knew exactly where to find information on new therapies and protocols and studies.

I am in a similar situation with aggressive cancer and poor prognosis, although some recent test results give hope that I may be one of the lucky few who beat it. I have a ton of support from my husband and adult children, so I turned down my friends’ offers of meals and cleaning. I don’t have a ton of regrets or a bucket list or anything. I just worry about who will take care of my children if I die. They are close to their dad and I know he would meet their needs, but who will mother them? So when my friends ask what they can do, I tell them that I need them to spoil my kids for me. I need them to continue being the special auntie who can be confided in, the fierce auntie who always has their back, the wise auntie who gives great advice-we need them all, regardless of what happens. Cancer diagnoses and treatments are hard on the whole family, so I really appreciate what my friends are doing now to make things easier for my kids. I might send a new jigsaw puzzle for the kids to work on, if your friend is spending a lot of time in bed, she might like a cheerful new book to read to the kids when they snuggle in bed with her. It is a great idea to tell her you are always available to talk. I do appreciate the friends I know I can turn to for what I call my free therapy lessons. I’m so sorry that your friend is in this situation, and I really hope things turn out better than anyone could have hoped.

I’m so glad it was nothing! I’m so glad that my oncologist lets me get all results as soon as they are available. The last time I had a PET scan, I had the report in my portal within hours of getting home. This gives me time to read it and research terms and then we I have an appointment, I’m prepared with my pages of questions. I’m in a study, and my patient liaison person said that they only send results to doctors in case the doctors don’t want the patients to have them before the doctor tells them the news. I said, “I’ll be calling to get an exemption from that rule.” This is a good reminder to make that call.

I wear progressives and love them, but I have gotten a bad pair before that gave me a migraine. They had to be redone. My 14 year old got progressives and I forced her to wear them so she could get used to them, and she ended up puking all over the pool deck because of them. Her doctor ended up putting her back to glasses only for reading instead. So my experience is that when they are right, it is easy to adjust to them, and when they are not, they need to be remade.

I think there is a vast middle of gray area. I guess that is what I’m really asking. Instead of everything being us versus them or talking in black and white terms, could we acknowledge our Covid safety measures are in a gray area and so are most of our friends. Yes, the extremes exist, but that isn’t most of us, so why are we even arguing?

I'd like to see a definition of "middle" that includes both the complainers and the people @ktgrok is describing. I think that I understand what you are saying. Correct me if I’m wrong. It is as if ktgrok complained that her brother got his 5th DUI and instead of everyone agreeing and commiserating with her about the sad and hurtful and dangerous situation, people started saying, “Well, I know you have one drink with dinner, so who are you to talk?”

That isn’t how I define middle.

The reason they don’t match is because I’m talking about 2 different things. We all agree on extremes. No one here is actually saying they agree with 300 plus guests and a bartender and no masks in sight. I don’t believe that is what our fellow WTMers are doing. But if we admit that our Covid behavior is somewhere in the middle, I really don’t understand how people can feel so superior to other people whose Covid precautions are also in the middle. That is where the stone casting comes in. “My risk is completely justified. Your risk just shows what a horrible person you are.” That is the issue I’m having.

Well, I don’t think that comparing Covid precautions to drunk driving is a bad analogy. Years ago, I shared my drinking and driving policy on the boards here, and many people thought I was ridiculously cautious. I never have one single drink when I am going to drive. So if I have dinner out with the girls, I ride with someone else, have Dh drop me off or I drink iced tea. Dh is comfortable having one drink out, like a glass of wine with dinner, but never 2 if he is driving. There are people (sadly some are my relatives) who drive falling down, black out drunk. We can all agree that is wrong, immoral, deserving to be judged. Just like with Covid, there are laws about blood alcohol levels that describe the point on the spectrum where on one side it is fine and on the other side it is a crime. Some people are teetotalers. There is a vast middle ground between those people and people with multiple DUIs. We all agree that one of those extremes is morally fine and one of those is always inexcusable. So we don’t need to waste time discussing extremes. We agree there. So most of us comply with whatever the law says is a legal blood alcohol level to still drive. What if you know what you can drink out with your friends at dinner. What if you know how long it takes the alcohol to metabolize. What if you know that you are completely comfortable having a drink before dinner and driving home 2 hours later. You are well within the confines of what is legal and what most people consider completely fine and safe. But what if I want to change the law to consider anything over 0% blood alcohol to be a DUI. I’m not satisfied making a policy for myself, I want to force everyone to do the same, to protect the public. Why take any chances at all? How is that worth the risk? You explain to me that the risk is very small. There is almost no alcohol in your system 2 hours after dinner. But that isn’t good enough for me. I insist that you listen to statistics about how many people are killed by drunk drivers. I can not BELIEVE that you are completely fine with my falling down drunk, black out ready, relatives. You do not care about humanity. You lack empathy because you are not willing to accept my guidelines as your own. Finally, you just walk away from me, shaking your head. This is where the scripture about throwing the first stone comes in. We are all taking risks, just like we all sin. That doesn’t mean we quit trying. “Oh well, since I can’t be sinless, I should go all out and sun as much as I can!” But it does mean that we need examine our own actions and be honest with ourselves about our choices and their potential repercussions. There isn’t any place for self-righteousness because no one’s behavior is above reproach.

My son has very thick curly hair that grows out instead of down. His girlfriend cut it at home. People are talking past each other on this thread by talking about extremes. I bet almost all of us are somewhere between hosting large unmasked parties and only leaving the house for mandatory work outside of the home. I bet we all agree that there is some place in between those 2 extremes that is the best balance we can get between being safe and being sane. But comprises are occurring for EVERYONE. We are just individually choosing which risks we consider necessary and which risks we consider just too risky. There is no problem with that. If we could just admit that our one balance wasn’t the answer for everyone, then we could have an actual discussion, but instead, people tend to focus on the extremes of behavior and solidify the us versus them mentality. I don’t actually think it is a wrong decision to get a hair cut or “pod” with relatives or neighbors. I think the error is in feeling like our choices are righteous and people who choose differently don’t care about humanity.