I got severely dehydrated last week, and also got an ear infection somehow, but I was concerned it might be COVID (even though I am fully vaccinated and have been for months). So I went to my favorite Urgent Care/ER to have both checked out. I’ve been here two other times in this last shutdown year, for a kidney stone and for chest pains (both resolved easily and were not serious). But there was never more than one other person in the waiting room.

This time, there were five in the waiting room, with no available beds for at least an hour to an hour and a half (which I think they meant in the ER portion of the facility because I was in and out on the Urgent Care side in about an hour). The nurse told me it was because the local hospital was at capacity and they were getting some of the overflow, plus walk-ins like me.

My major concern this past year has been the hospitals. If the hospitals are overrun with COVID patients, then they don’t have the capacity for heart attacks, strokes, broken bones and concussions. If I had another kidney stone, where would I go? Where would my kid go after a fall or a spiked fever at 2am?

Of course, the information I’m receiving is saying that this new variant is making more kids sick than the previous ones did. Arkansas Children’s Hospital issued a press release this week stating they have 24 patients hospitalized who are positive with COVID-19, 7 of them in ICU and 4 on ventilators. This is a 50% increase from any previous daily hospitalization. So, the whole “it’s not as bad for kids” may not be entirely true for this form of the virus.

So while one half of me is following this information so I can try to make the day to day decisions that involve my kid, the other half of me is tired.

I’m tired of the fighting. I’m tired of the cacophony of information resources that make up our country. I’m tired of not feeling safe in public places because frankly, people aren’t being honest about the whole mask/vaccinated thing.

But then, I also get it. I get that there are a lot of good fights to fight, things worth fighting for that will affect the generations to come. I get that we have all been misled in one way or another in our lives, and even the best of informational resources have been wrong at times, and that’s a really scary place to be wrong. I get that people have been harassed on both sides of the mask issue as well as the vaccine.

I’m just tired. And the idea of facing another shutdown (even if self-imposed) sounds overwhelming, even for a homebody like me. Because I know it will not be everyone this time. I know that my state will never impose another lockdown again (although I truly want to be wrong about that if we really face dire times again). It will be my own choice, and I will miss out on the community I desperately need. The community I have needed for over a year. The community I have only tasted these last two months.

But I’m going to do what I normally do. I’m going to write a long blog post (check). Then I’m going to pray about it (as I have been every single day since the beginning of this whole thing). Then I’m going to breathe, go to bed, sleep, get up in the morning and start a new day. With the hope that I may be a little less tired than I was the day before.