OT : The Coronavirus. Has it reached you yet? How are you?

So we're not out of the woods yet.

Pushers and junkies seem to have been let loose all over the neighborhood where I work. Actually, there is a 1 (or 2 at best) star hotel nearby where the sign always says no vacancy but you never see any tourist there, only junkies and often cops drop by and people are being arrested. So a guy got stabbed multiple times over a drug deal gone bad. Turns out he first got hit on the sidewalk, right next to the building then he moved towards the main entrance, where he fell on the porch, after being stabbed a few times again.

I was inside, but near the windows at street level, so despite not seeing the first hit I heard the yell.

My initial reaction was just to barely turn my head to take a quick look outside, to see if it was another homeless drunk fight or if it was another residents fight. Then I saw a resident (looking fine and standing up) outside with a nurse and she already had her cellphone to her ear, so I looked through another window and saw a guy on the ground holding his ribs while right leg was covered in blood.

He managed to get up by himself but moved towards the building entrance. Now there was a commotion both outside from people passing by and inside by other witnesses. The security guy kept the doors locked because we saw the guy chasing the injured still going up and down the streets, moving after him. Now, we also got our commotion inside has two nurse/orderly/ward assistant were trying to get out, yelling they had to go now or else they would be late for their next shift at another center.

They were insulting the security guy, who was calling the 911 (112 in Europe), and everybody else, yelling they needed to get out. I mean, a guy who is bleeding like crazy is laying on the porch while his aggressor is still nearby, a few meters from the entrance and those two employees thought the most urgent thing that should be handled was allowing them to go out...

So,the aggressor left (he got caught later), the ambulance came and the police sealed the street for the rest of the day (it was around 15h20 when it happened but when I left at 20h00 the street was still sealed so I had to leave through the back alley).

Anyway, next morning (talking about people who have to come in for the day shift starting between 6h30 and 7h30) the street had been re-opened but nobody already present, and I really mean nobody, thought it would be a good idea to post a sign or have someone outside tell everyone to use the back entrance.

So we all had to walk in a pool (about 5' x 4') of semi-dried blood (too much to completely dry) to get to the door while a pile of bloody rags and compresses (that had been used on the spot to help the man while the ambulance was on the way) was still right next to the door. It's not that I never saw anything like that before but I thought that it lacked humanity to have left it all there, without cleaning anything over night. I mean, we're not savages or barbarians who simply walk in the blood of the people who had been slain for crying out loud.

Well that was last week but junkies and drug dealers are still swarming the area so we have to be careful.

A good thing is we don't have to worry much about our residents being outside for now because a new case has been confirmed over the weekend so all residents are locked on their units again. The person who tested positive was roaming freely the activity room so she had the luxury of talking and meeting other residents for a while... Turns out there have been new cases in other centers too.

In other news, we have a supply chain issue for white bread in the Montréal Downtown. At least, that's what the delivery company, for one of the biggest producer in the area, told me when I called them because we had not received our order. Whole wheat bread and other types seem fine but the basic slice white bread is short...

There have been new rules for the dispatch of PPE, especially medical gloves, but mostly for the L and XL sizes. I guess they'll have to hire more women...

And our cardboard container, somehow ended up on its side. I mean, it's a big thing, like this:



So right now, it's laying on the side, where the side door is. That means the homeless roaming the back alley got all the cardboard boxes they needed and they left the rest here and there. The store owners who share the back alley with my center will probably file a complaint again...

That's the state of things right now, if I'm not talking about personnel shortage and other small issues.


If I ever write a book on what it was like in 2020, simply making it through and working in long term care homes, I'll make sure to use this meme: