March 24, 2020:  The Thermometer Story

Ramification lite (a break from giant ruminations in Parts 1 and 2 from earlier today) :

When I first wondered if I had COVID, I knew I needed to take my temp. We have a jumbled, very large medicine-and-other-things cupboard in the hall, plus a few small drawers in the bathroom for frequent things, and I was close to the drawers, and I had washed my hands forever (trying not to expose my husband, who felt okay and does today), and in that drawer – the first place I looked! - was a thermometer. Yay! We are a healthy group and I wasn’t sure where a thermometer might be, but there one was, first try!

It was, however, excessively newfangled. We had bought it last summer during a visit from our grandson, and it had some kind of light beam, and it was axillary (armpit), but you were supposed to run it over your forehead (?) and you were supposed to hold down a button for a while, and the print was small, and it was just generally a puzzle. Anyway, I tried it various ways. Armpit? Forehead? Cheek? Hold the button a long time? A short time? Double-click?

At last I sent a message to one other person I knew who had admitted she felt bad, though not severely ill. I said: Grim news. My temperature is 74.4.

(I lied. It was also 85.3. And it was 95.6. It was a many-splendored thing, my temperature.)

Then after a good rummage in the big jumbled cupboard, I found two thermometers, old-fashioned, in nearly identical cases. One said “Oral” on the container and one did not. I stared at them a while. They were different. I said (from a distance), “Honey, I think we own one oral thermometer and one rectal thermometer, though the rectal one doesn’t actually say rectal on the case.”

He allowed as to how this was a possible explanation.

I said, “Why do we own a rectal thermometer? When have we ever had anything that would require us to use a rectal thermometer? Why is there one in the cupboard at all?”

He said, “For the baby!”

I said, “No, that is the newfangled electronic thingy that thinks I am already a corpse. This thing is OLD.”

He said, “Not for that baby. For OUR baby.”

Whoa. Thirty-four years ago, you went out and got a rectal thermometer so you would have it for your baby, in case you needed it. Just Whoa.