FEATURE
THE CLICK OF MY RETAINER AUTHOR Jes Eskridge
I
was home . I was safe . I was under the weight of my comforter and felt the familiar tightness of my retainer as it clicked around my teeth . The snow fell outside my window as the streetlights broke through the crevices of woodwork and glass , delicately concealed by my window blinds . I rolled over from the dim light of my street and met the phone held in my hand . I perused the news , mindlessly scrolling through the headlines I had missed from a perpetual burying of my face in lecture notes and textbooks . And while I don ’ t recall the exact verbiage of the title , I remember one that emerged from the rest — “ 80 deaths in Wuhan , China caused by a novel coronavirus .” As I read on , the article broadcast a pregnant , lulling threat of a global pandemic . And as I fluttered between rest and reading , I thought of Wuhan and felt condolences for the loss of those people and the incertitude surrounding the debut of this infection . However , I also recall believing that even if a pandemic did rise from these events , it would echo what the sweeping strains of various influenzas in my lifetime had . And as the headlines spread each day , unforgivingly warping their tentacles around each country and media outlet , I became acutely aware of how naive my assumption was . And soon I found myself waiting with bated breath as I braced for the day the virus I read about from the comfort and safety of my home became an invader whose arrival was imminent .
And then it happened .
The morning of March 16 , 2020 , as the sun swelled over the rolling Kentucky hills , our lives as we ’ d known them froze within the perimeters of our homes — forcing reminiscence of all we had taken for granted outside of those walls . SARS-CoV-2 had landed with fury and vengeance , and it roared in defiance in the face of all of those who had doubted and scorned it , by the hubris that falsely reassured our preparedness . Yet there I was , and the place that once felt like a haven abruptly became my confines . My comforter and retainer no longer felt like the end of a day , but rather the start of an era with no end in sight . My head on the pillow no longer felt like rest , but like the pulsing at my temples precipitated by my unbroken stare at a glowing , blue screen .
The screen was omnipresent : for remote academic work , then for any morsel of news that could tell me what we ’ d learned about this microscopic intruder . My heart raced as I thought about those in health care , as the rest of the world was working remotely . Headlines began proclaiming my professors as heroes , flashing images of their
20 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE