I am kinda losing my sense of time and date now. Every day is weekend now with no sight of Monday. I am thankful that at least I live close to my family now so if the situation keeps getting worse, I will stay with them to escape loneliness.
On facebook, there are still some conversations here and there between closing or opening dental clinics. I think most people agree that we should close clinics and open for emergencies only. However, some dentists still ignore the ADA recommendation or even State Board’s order to open because they see this opportunity as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a profit while all the other competitors close. There are always good and bad people no matter where you live.
I happened to live in Washington State – one of the three states that got hit hardest in the country by the virus. Since a lot of my family members work in healthcare – specifically for several nursing homes in the area – I am more worried about the situation than my staff. They thought I was overreacting and that is okay. Everyone has different worries – either financial burden or health. At least at this point, we all worry about the same thing: our unemployment status and our sanity.
Politics aside, I am thankful to live in this country. Majority dentists are bored to death at home so we start to share around all online courses from marketing to endo. Some courses even give it out for free during this hardship to help other fellows. Kudos to them! You guys rock! I am not filing for unemployment yet and just sitting tight for now, but I will have to by April. I hope that unemployment insurance can at least help me cover my rent and car payment, but I feel like right now there are other people needing it more than me, so I let them file first. Possibly I will not make any difference in the long waiting list but let’s just wait for now. I called all my student loan reps to postpone payment for at least 2 months. Got two of them delaying for 2 months without any interest and the last one (also the biggest one) delaying for 3 months with some interest. I will try to call the car loan rep again tomorrow. I plan to keep paying rent for now with my savings because paying now or paying 10 months from now is almost the same (the end of my rent contract) - the financial prospect doesn’t look that promising yet at the end of the year. The goal now is to preserve as much cash as possible in case this virus will last more than 2 months.
Tonight, the governor issued “Stay-at-home” order. We all knew this would come sooner or later. My mom asked me to come home but I will still stay in my apartment for a while. It’s only 20min away anyway. I facetimed my besties from CU to check on each other. It is a tough time for everybody now but we could still laugh at each other’s jokes just like our CU time. Oh how much I miss my best two years in Colorado!