Boy's mom turns home into aquarium after coronavirus nixed his party - q107.com
Boy's mom turns home into aquarium after coronavirus nixed his party - q107.com |
| Boy's mom turns home into aquarium after coronavirus nixed his party - q107.com Posted: 21 Apr 2020 11:04 AM PDT One Michigan mom went above, beyond and under the sea to make up for her son's birthday trip, cancelled due to the coronavirus outbreak. Becky Spagnuolo and her husband, Nick, had decided to take their son to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium for his second birthday on April 13. Since Clark was born, he's always been fascinated by sea creatures. For nearly his entire life, he's tagged along to older brother Mikey's speech therapy sessions. There, the walls are full of painted fish.
"Each time we were there, I would walk him up and down the halls telling him about the fish," she told Global News. "Some of his first words were fish … We just knew that a trip to the Shedd Aquarium would blow him away." So in January, they decided to book a train trip to Chicago to do just that — visit the city's famous aquarium, home to animals from sea otters to tropical fish. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 outbreak threw a wrench in their plans, forcing them to cancel the trip.  Michigan mom Becky Spagnuolo transformed her living room into an aquarium for her son's birthday after the pandemic required them to stay home. Becky Spagnuolo"Cancelling the trip broke my heart," Spagnuolo said. "This was going to be our chance to really give Clark a day about him and what he loves." A day or two after they cancelled their trip, hotel room and all, they came up with the idea to turn their own living room into an aquarium of sorts. "I was just looking for a way to make everyone smile," she said. Looking back to her days when she volunteered at a preschool, she remembered decorations put up on the walls for their ocean unit with the kids.
With craft supplies she already had at home, as well as some ordered from Amazon, Spagnuolo got to work. She and her husband covered their windows with blue tissue paper, giving the illusion of fish tanks. Blue balloons and blow-up fish decorated the space, along with cut-out sharks and turtles and even a mini penguin family. "Clark's reaction to the aquarium was exactly what I would have expected had we been at the real thing," she recalled.
One of Clark's favourite Disney characters is Dory, a blue tang fish. Even she made an appearance that day.  The Spagnuolo family turned their living room into an aquarium when their birthday trip to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium was cancelled due to COVID-19. Becky Spagnuolo"Then he noticed a blue tang I had made on the back window. He shouted, 'Dory! I found Dory, look!' as he ran over to it," she shared. For the Spagnuolo family, a bit of imagination and creativity helped bring everyone together. — Questions about COVID-19? Here are some things you need to know: Health officials caution against all international travel. Returning travellers are legally obligated to self-isolate for 14 days, beginning March 26, in case they develop symptoms and to prevent spreading the virus to others. Some provinces and territories have also implemented additional recommendations or enforcement measures to ensure those returning to the area self-isolate. Symptoms can include fever, cough and difficulty breathing — very similar to a cold or flu. Some people can develop a more severe illness. People most at risk of this include older adults and people with severe chronic medical conditions like heart, lung or kidney disease. If you develop symptoms, contact public health authorities. To prevent the virus from spreading, experts recommend frequent handwashing and coughing into your sleeve. They also recommend minimizing contact with others, staying home as much as possible and maintaining a distance of two metres from other people if you go out. For full COVID-19 coverage from Global News, click here. — With files from Reuters meaghan.wray@globalnews.ca Follow @meaghanwray© 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc. |
| Pediatric practices struggle to adapt and survive | Health - The Union Leader Posted: 20 Apr 2020 05:06 PM PDT  BERKELEY, Calif. — The silence was striking. On a normal day, the well-child waiting room at Berkeley Pediatrics bustles with children playing, infants crying and teenagers furiously tapping on their smartphones. On a recent Monday, the room was deserted, save for a bubbling tropical fish tank and a few empty chairs. Every book, puzzle and wooden block had been confiscated to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. There was not a young patient to be seen. Since March 17, when San Francisco Bay Area officials issued the nation's first sweeping orders for residents to shelter in place, patient volume at the 78-year-old practice has dropped by nearly 60%. In accordance with guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, its seven doctors have canceled well-child visits for almost all children older than 18 months. And some parents balk at bringing in even babies for vaccines, opening the door to another potential crisis down the road. In the days after the COVID-19 clampdown, the office scrambled to set up telehealth for sick visits. Still, this small, independent practice has gone from seeing more than 100 patients a day to about 40. It has laid off six staff members, and the physicians have taken a 40% pay cut. "I've been practicing for a long time, and I've seen a lot of things. This is a very different beast," said Dr. Annemary Franks, who joined the practice in 1993. "I've never seen in a week the entire thing fall apart." Across the U.S., thousands of pediatric practices that provide front-line care for the nation's children are struggling to adjust to a dire new reality: crashing revenue, terrified parents and a shortage of protective equipment, from gloves and goggles to thermometer covers. And all while they are being asked to care for young patients who could well be infected with COVID-19 — and prime vectors for transmission — without showing symptoms. How well these practices adapt will be key as the nation looks to weather the pandemic: Pediatric offices provide a crucial release valve for the health care system by treating the broken bones, lacerations, colds, flus and chronic illnesses that might otherwise flood overburdened emergency departments. "If it's a month or two of care this way, OK. But if this is months and months and months, we're going to see more practices go under," said Franks. "We don't have some pot of money that we have sitting around to get us through this. We're fee-for-service. You get paid for what you do." Like many practices, Berkeley Pediatrics improvised overnight in the face of COVID-19. The brown-shingled Craftsman that houses the practice was quickly divided into two halves: upstairs for well patients, downstairs for those who are sick. They opened a back entrance up an unused set of stairs so well patients could bypass the sick. Before they get an appointment, all children are screened by phone for signs of the virus. When possible, sick children are treated via a video visit. If a child with respiratory symptoms needs to be seen in person, a doctor meets the child in the family's car in the parking lot, dressed in gown, gloves and face shield. Everyone who enters the office — whether child or caregiver — is checked for fever. The practice has only 75 plastic thermometer covers left, and supplies are on backorder. The doctors wear surgical masks even for well-child visits. "Every day I think to myself, 'That's exactly the opposite of what I was taught in medical school and what I was trained to do,'" said Dr. Olivia Lang, another physician at Berkeley Pediatrics. "I'm not supposed to wear masks and scare my patients, but I'm doing it every day." Telehealth makes eye contact challenging, she said. And in an effort to avoid in-person appointments, health care providers have resorted to prescribing antibiotics over the phone for symptoms suggesting ear infections and strep throat, without doing lab work. "We're supposed to be good stewards of antibiotics, and that's being dismantled," Lang said. Another challenge is the availability of personal protective equipment, a struggle for all health care workers. Pediatric practices do not routinely keep stocks of the heavy-duty N95 masks, and they seldom use gowns or even simple surgical masks. Now, with hospitals facing critical shortages of PPE, pediatricians are often low on the list to get supplies. Dr. Kristen Haddon, a pediatrician outside Boston, said the practice didn't jump to purchase supplies when cases of the novel coronavirus first emerged in Washington state in January. "It felt very far away and seemed very isolated," she said. By the time they realized the virus was widespread, "there was nothing to be had." They had no N95s, gowns or goggles, and only two boxes of surgical masks. Pediatricians are considered at particular risk of infection, given preliminary research that suggests children infected with COVID-19 are more likely than adults to have mild cases and may be contagious while showing no symptoms at all. "We have absolutely no idea who is infected and who isn't," said Haddon. "Kids cough and sneeze in our face all the time. And one cough could be really bad for me." Many practices are delaying booster shots for older kids. Dr. Tina Carrol-Scott, a Miami pediatrician, said she's concerned that the mixed messaging could backfire with parents who are vaccine-hesitant. "If we start taking the stance that because of coronavirus it's OK for you to be delayed a month or two, it kind of takes away our credibility as physicians," she said. "Parents are going to say, 'Well, it was OK to delay during coronavirus, why not now?'" And it's not just missed vaccinations that are a concern. Pediatricians are tracking growth and development at well-child visits. For newborns, that includes checks for weight loss, jaundice and congenital diseases. "We've had parents of infants who are 1 week old say, 'Oh I don't want to come in; I don't think it's safe,'" said Dr. Scott Needle, a pediatrician in Sacramento, California. "We've had to tell them, 'Look, for a 1-week-old baby just out of the hospital, there are a lot of things you need to check that could be much more dangerous than coronavirus at this point.'" |
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