Well, I have my fair share of quarantine orders for the whole month of September due to the fact that I have higher hit rate (4 children attending school at the same time). When I thought I was out from the first quarantine order, I was then slapped with another one and thereafter. All of my friends were telling me that — I was that friends who always tio things relating to COVID-19 and blaa blaa blaa.
And this is not enough. The real stress came when Govt just announced some changes to the COVID-19 routine and also how they are going to deal with the existing, suspecting and at risk cases with the Multi-taskforce Press Conference held on 9 October and the encouragement of home recovery instead.
However, on 10 October, my mum called after I reached home from the dinner from her place, she mentioned – Dad’s ART came out to be positive. She decided to do an ART on my dad after he was coughing and wheezing very badly. He has an underlying conditions with severe childhood asthma since young. So I told my mum to do a test on the rest of the household members (my 90+ grandma, my 70+ uncle and etc) – all cleared and negative and I told her that it could be, the virus is not “awake” yet. Did an ART for the kids, all negative despite No 4 having a bad sore throat.
The very next day, my mum told me she’s down with fever and was vomiting very badly. And the rest was history. All I can remember was — I sent her to hospital, send the elderly to the hospital and then liaising with MOH. Initially there are alot of confusion with the MOH and etc because of the new policies and arrangement. After much frustration, I shifted temporarily back to my mum’s place to take care and isolate myself from the rest.
In the end, due to the fact that we have a 90+ yrs old, 70+ and parents with underlying conditions, we managed to split the arrangement to — bringing back the 90+ to recuperate at home, send the parents and uncle to CCF. Thank god for the PSLE marking days, I got the girls to join me in taking care of my grandma while Sharanne prepare for her exams remotely.
This is the moment that I realised it wasn’t easy to work with intense work, rebuild (family) business, take care of kids, preparing the elder one for exams and take care of a grandma who has dementia. During this period, I gave up a few opportunities (including my sleep) and decide to keep family sanity as priority and everything else. Shall leave the opportunities to fate again.
Thank god for the encouragements and support along the way. What doesn’t kill me made me stronger! And right now all of them are COVID-19 free till 20xx!
As there are rising cases, just pray hard things will go back to the same soon! 🙂
WILLYNN (@hueyytingg) 