Pandemic Daze: The Joys Of Working While Wearing PPE

 My job is currently mostly virtual, although that may change soon.  Plenty has been said about the challenges of working and learning remotely, but under the circumstances, working in-person is likewise not a picnic.

I had to go into a school today to conduct a speech and language evaluation for a kid.  First of all, as an issue entirely separate from the pandemic, evaluations are not my favorite part of the job, particularly ones that involve standardized assessments.  I have yet to find a way to make a standardized assessment fun for anybody, and they sometimes drag on for an unreasonably long time.

With schools in the district where I work being virtual for now, conducting one of these evaluations involves coordinating with parents to bring their child to school.  This always leaves open the possibility that they will be late or forget.  Also, they may have scheduling constraints for pick-up that do not match the realities of the testing.

Also, of course, we have to use PPE while we do the testing.  I'm pretty used to wearing masks, and I believe they are necessary, but they also prevent me from drinking water during a period of time when I have to do a lot of talking with a clear voice.  I'm always parched by the time I'm done.  I've been provided with what I think of as a crummy face shield (though I wonder how good they ever are), which is basically the equivalent of having to look through dirty glasses for the duration of the evaluation.  Today, at the request of a parent, I had to also wear a plastic disposable gown and some sort of slippery plastic gloves.

So, imagine the scene...I'm sitting with a kid I've never met before, possibly boring him to the point of tears with standardized assessments.  I'm getting a headache from dehydration and looking through a plastic sheet that is most definitely not transparent.  The plastic gloves I'm wearing are so slippery I have trouble turning pages in the test books that I'm using to show the kid pictures for the assessment.  And I'm straining to hear the kid's already quiet voice, which is muffled by his mask and the plexiglass barrier between us.

If we ever return to any approximation of "normal," so many things will feel so much easier than they are now.