Still Without a Coronavirus Evacuation Plan

Today's story is about diarrhea.  If that upsets your stomach you can come back tomorrow for a piece on Coronavirus Fashion.  Suit yourself.

I've been living in fear (panic) of the coronavirus for 43 days.  In the first 13 days I had very little contact with the outside world.  And for the past 30, I've had none. I've either been home or in the fields surrounding home (as far as I wanted to venture at first, but now with a 200-meter restriction). 

It sounds safe until I tell you that I live with someone that still has to go to work.  That's where the hysteria sets in.  I wouldn't be afraid of my tiny blue house and all of its drawer pulls and doorknobs if they, too, had no contact with the outside world. But Flavio (not Fabio, for my American readers) works in a building with three other people and I've nicknamed them "the outside world." Fortunately he has his own office and shares the floor with only one person, but it's still not home-sweettinyblue-home.  

He and his colleagues are required to use up old vacation days in an attempt to keep the number of people in the building at one time as low as possible. Masks are required, but they have all chosen to wear their own rather than those the office provided (which are much more effective as cleaning rags than masks).

Flavio only has permission to drive to and from work.  His extra-curricular activites include getting gas and buying groceries. If there's no self service, he drives on. If there is more than one car in the grocery store parking lot, he doesn't stop. After 32 days with no shopping, he finally found an empty parking lot and once again, we have Nutella.

I considered this wild boar hunting blind as a housing option.

A couple of days after the shopping spree he came home from work early with diarrhea. I knew I should have read the instructions on what to do if you have coronavirus symptoms instead of reading the cereal box, because there were probably also instructions on what to do if the person you live with has the symptoms. (I wouldn't have known diarrhea was a symptom had I not listened to the first eight seconds of a message from the States about a friend's brother-in-law that had diarrhea and then the coronavirus. I was well aware of the big symptoms like fever, cough and difficulty breathing. Unfortunately, my avoidance of all media wasn't enough to protect me from a fourth symptom.)

When Flavio got home he tried to convince me he'd eaten bad salami and then he went straight to bed.  I was thankful that I don't like salami and I went straight to panic mode.  I'm a terrible nurse, but did find the courage to leave a cup of tea outside the bedroom door.

I talked to friends, cried and tried to eat some pasta pomodoro (pasta marinara). Then it came to mind that maybe Flavio's homemade sauce was the culprit.  And although I'd prefer bad-tomato-sauce induced diarrhea to the coronavirus, I stopped eating anyway.

I refused to go to the back half of the house. I wore my mask (for the first time) in the front half.  And seeing that the bathroom wasn't in my half I waited until it got dark and then watered the tree in the front yard.

I knew Flavio would tell me if he had a fever (the instructions probably said to inform family members) so I didn't ask.  I just lay in bed counting the minutes between flushes and working on an evacuation plan. If Flavio was sick no one would take me in because I might be sick, too. And what about the recent MIT study (I hope it's not true) suggesting droplets carrying the coronavirus can travel up to 27 feet? My house is only 24. I finally fell asleep to those sweet dreams only to wake a few hours later to a flush, but still no fever.

I spent the morning masked and waiting for news. The request at noon for chicken noodle soup was the beginning of the end. The salami was thrown away and the tomato sauce was put in the freezer with a masking tape label that says "diarrhea."

We returned to normal life on lockdown....dining like royalty at the  opposite ends of a long table, forwarding funny videos instead of watching them together on the same phone, cleaning the doorknobs and drawer pulls with pink alcohol, over-washing our hands and hoping.

For the thousands of people whose nightmare didn't end with a cup of chicken noodle soup, mi dispiace (I'm sorry). Mi dispiace tantissimo (I'm really, really sorry).