03.14.2020 update noonish

Hello all,

We are not liking to post this news.  There was a teleconference last night from the CDC to all of us.  They announced that we would all be here for the full 14 days.  They have only tested 50 passengers out of the 500 that came off the ship with us.  Due, they said, to the amount of paperwork involved with each test.  John had talked to the doctor who performs the tests yesterday, explained his immune status, and the doctor wrote the information on his sheet and said that John would be moved up the list.  We received our tests today about noon.  The samples will be flown to North Carolina, and results should be available in 2-5 days.

We talked to our contact at the Washington State Public Health department after the news of last night.  He told us that his information was that we are still coming home.  In particular they are trying to get us home as well as another Washington State passenger that has cancer and needs chemo.  He is still working on getting us out.

The line for food gets long.  Especially since we are supposed to maintain the new term, social distancing of six feet.  There is a CDC man in protective gear at the door whose job it is to check off our names from his list when we go to get a meal.  Likely so that no one sneaks back in for more food.  Institutional food actually self-controls that.  No one will sneak back in for more.  Nutrition without visual appeal.  Well, not totally true, the oranges are pretty.

Today we got outside and walked the perimeter of the compound several times, which felt good.  Yesterday it was raining pretty much all day, so we were pretty much confined to our room.  We walked around the room to get some steps, but it was soooo boring.

This morning we got our luggage!  Yeah!  We packed our ‘overnight’ bag at the ship.  We were told it should last 24 hours, so we did, and sent out the rest of our luggage to be transferred to the plane.  Well, that was almost a week ago, and a long 24 hours.  Our laundry bag was in our big bag, so Co was able to dig through the used laundry and got our some of our underwear and washed them in our bathroom sink.  We will have a few pairs of clean undies.  They do have a self-laundry here, and we have a few Tide pods, but, no one has quarters for the machines.  We didn’t need quarters when we were on the ship, so we didn’t bring any.

More as we learn,

Colleen and John