My Summer Vacation: My Brain is Full

For these past 3 weeks this is what I feel like at the end of class on Friday. Although this week my brain was not quite so full because we are on a break from Papa ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi until the next semester starts up in a couple of weeks. There is just so much material that is being covered in the contact tracer training classes!

Dr. Ric started out the morning class sharing a story with us about his babysitter who was Marshallese. He also greeted Amanda Martinez, our guest speaker for today.

These are 2 of the many necklaces Dr. Ric's babysitter gifted him as a child.

This morning Team Imi a Ola'a did their "of the Day" presentation.

This is one of the 1st patients in the US before it was officially diagnosed as being here.

The team members each presented their Pic of the Day.

BJ with her therapy dog Lady that did rounds with her in the pediatric wing.

Lori with her water lilies on the morning Hurricane Douglas was supposed to come in.

Tellie with her reasons for becoming a contact tracer.

Surlester enjoying a hike with his wife.

Robert & his wife at their son's graduation.

Amanda Martinez from Mental Health America of Hawai'i was our guest lecturer today. For the morning portion she talked about youth mental health challenges and strategies.

I said, d) I'd keep on walking ...

Amanda said on average it takes 10 years for youth who seek mental health services to finally get the help.

This is from 2020

She said there are things that can be done after Ideation to reduce the Attempts.

Amanda said COVID-19 has made this unavailable to youth.

We watched this video about making the 1st step to talk to someone about suicide.

I better start walking again! That's my current self-care time.

After lunch break, Amanda continued, this time talking about mental health issues and strategies for adults. I need to start doing my sunrise birding walk again; it is one of my self-care strategies.

At the beginning of the afternoon session, Dr. Ric left the Zoom class after Amanda started talking. Unfortunately he forgot to allow her to share the screen so she could not get her PowerPoint slide show started. Robert called him and let him know we were stuck. After Amanda was done he apologized for being away. Their feral cat Bean had disappeared; it turns out she got locked in to a shed on the property!

Towards the end of class, the discussion turned to whether we our class might be called up before we finish out 6 weeks of training to begin contact tracing since the numbers have stayed in the triple digits. We will know more by next week what is happening on that front. Dr. Ric also suggested everyone have a thermometer and pulse oximeter at their house. He said if a person's blood oxygen level goes below 90% they should be checked out by their physician; he said it is especially important for kupuna and people with respiratory issues. If a person's blood oxygen drops below 70% for too long, organs can be damaged and begin to shut down.

While the afternoon class was going on I got a call from Selu at Maunalani; the drive through visits were being cancelled due to the surge in new COVID-19 cases. I'm glad I was going in as much as I was able to see Dad while I could. Now I have another reason to help get the number of new COVID-19 cases down to a much lower number!

I received a text later with a link to the Maunalani family newsletter site. Last night a newly admitted resident tested positive for COVID-19. Fortunately, Maunalani is very diligent; all new admissions are place in a designated observation unit where they are closely monitored while Maunalani administers a COVID-19 test. After finding that new admission was positive, the patient was taken to the hospital to minimize transmission to other residents and staff. All the other residents in the observation unit as well as staff are currently being tested.

The low pressure disturbance is now about 550 miles southeast of us, moving westerly at about 10 mph. It has about a 40% chance of becoming an organized storm over the next 5 days. Tropical Depression Ten-E is still in the Eastern Pacific region and moving westerly at about 5 mph; it is forecast to remain at its current levels over the next few days.

Due to the high numbers of new cases more restrictions are being discussed at the state level; the county mayor's have asked that any restrictions consider that O'ahu is where there are problems and the other counties are still relatively virus-free. Another 124 inmates at OCCC have tested positive. There are a total of 968 inmates; this is12.8% from 2.5 of the 19 modules. More positive cases are expected as more inmates are tested.

There were 233 new COVID-19 cases reported today; bringing the total up to 4543. The latest batch of tests had an 8.8% positivity rate. Thankfully, there were no new deaths. But there were 10 new hospitalizations, bringing the number of COVID-19 cases in the hospital up to 173; about 56% of the ICU are currently occupied. The number of cases that have been released from isolation has dropped to 39%.