Elephants and Tea - June 2020 - 20

Self-Isolation

COVID-19

Self Isolation from a Master
BY C A SE Y K A NG H E A D

his is how to handle self-isolation from someone
who's had to do it multiple times. This self-isolation that everyone is experiencing for the first
time I have been through multiple times due
to cancer. As a three-time cancer survivor I
have been practicing the basic social distancing for over six
years, this is nothing new to me or my cancer friends. We
often avoid large crowds, constantly wipe things down with
anti-bacterial cleaning products, obsessively wash our hands
and avoid anyone that may be sick or has come in contact
with someone sick. I have had multiple 30 plus days stays in
the hospital for various complications from cancer. There
were two really big ones that mentally I had to really dig
deep and hunker down.

ELEPHANTSANDTEA.COM
JUNE 2020

The first time I was seriously isolated from the world
was when I was in lockdown in the hospital for 68 days
straight in a 400 square foot hospital room. I wasn't allowed to leave the floor. I couldn't have visitors that were
sick or had colds because I was on the stem cell transplant
floor which has extremely strict rules on who they allow as
visitors. I wasn't ever really given a timeline of discharge
either because my body had become resistant to chemotherapy drugs and was in the limbo land of treatment. It
ended up being 68 days after begging to go home because
I was slowly starting to lose my mind as you can imagine.
The second time was right after my 32-day hospital stay
from having a stem cell transplant. My medical team
discharged me home, where I spent the next 60 plus days

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Elephants and Tea - June 2020

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