Over the past 2 weeks several of those close to me have been sick. K****, J*****, T**** and one other all tested positive for COVID recently. A***** and my mother tested negative but both have a horrible cough that has lasted for weeks. Many co- workers have become ill as well. Im not sure I would say these symptoms are “minor”. Every single one of them is vaccinated too. One of my friends stated she got it from a party and every single person at the party ended up COIVD positive. This new Omnicron strain is extremely contagious. I have tested negative twice and I have no symptoms. Still, I quarantined once again for Christmas. I did not see any family members for Thanksgiving or Christmas. I miss my mother lots. I miss everyone a lot. Quarantine isn’t too hard for me since I have a billion and one hobbies. But I still miss family for the holidays. I worked both holidays (and probably new years too). We got our asses handed to us on Christmas and Christmas eve. We had enough units on the street, the call volume was just really high. The day after Christmas I went to work extremely tired and knew I would down the unit at some point but I want to get out there for as long as i could. We ended up running this really awful cardiac arrest. It looked like the patient had been shot in the face. But i was just alot of bloody vomit. I remember seeing one of those small taste test glass of wine next to their chair still almost full of red wine they had just poured. The poor patient had called 911 for themself and when fire got there the patient had coded. I remember hearing the call go over the radio, dispatch had said “we have an open line but patient is no longer answer questions, were not sure if they passed out”. We only cleared the hospital because we heard calls popping off everywhere and figured we should help out. I wasn’t even done with my previous paperwork yet. The dispatched us to the call as “ineffective breathing”. Good thing we cleared because if our unit didn’t exist they would have been waiting possibly 1hr+ for an ambulance coming from either Livermore or Oakland. ALCO is a busy system but it makes me cringe how chronically low levels we are in the county.

I didn’t pick up any extra shifts this week. I really needed a mental health break. I bought everyones presents super last minute, but i didn’t finish my shopping and then everyone quarantined at once. I canned 7 quarts of Jambalaya, dehydrated some persimmons and made some apple butter. All in the same day and all for the first time. I think they came out OK. Yesterday I pained some dungeons and dragons miniatures and have plenty of D&D reference books to last me a lifetime. Its really an addiction. Despite all these things happening I think New Years will be relatively uneventful. I have a bad feeling about 2022. More lockdowns? Stock Market Crash? World Wide Economic collapse? More Supply Chain issues? The New Norm? Only time will tell. Until next time, may you live until you die.