This year has been a huge surprise and challenge for all of us. I am sure you have been doing your best and staying busy as have I. I have missed you. I have missed working. I won’t lie, I miss being able to work at the hospital. I miss it so much but, it just isn’t safe or worth the risk. I know I will be get to be there again one day and will continue to look forward to that. I cried when we had to close our private practice and move everything out and end the lease. It truly wasn’t safe. In a building we loved, with office staff, cleaning, free coffee service and a lovely office of our own it was heartbreaking. With over a hundred other private offices, the trajectories of humans and surfaces for the virus and no income to pay for rent it was suddenly overwhelming.
As Licensed Massage Therapists we were told, we truly were not allowed to practice in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania until much later in the Summer of 2020 and then, as now we are only allowed to practice at 50%. Even at that it is concerning with the lovely, deep and complete 45 page document provided for us by the Federation of State Massage Boards (FSTMB) and recommended by the State Board of Massage Therapy in Pennsylvania and many other states. In order to safely practice we needed to remove many things from our practices. Things such as curtains, books, tchotchkes; anything we couldn’t put behind a glass door or closed cabinet or couldn’t completely clean and sanitize after each session. This led to us even purchasing rugs we could wash after each session. Yes, ourselves and massage therapists across the country spent lots of money on masks, goggles, aprons, gloves, air purifiers, cleaning products and so many other products in order to practice safely again one day. Of course more time has to be put in between sessions in order to have additional time to clean and either allow the air purifier to process or air out the session room. Even then we were not certain that ourselves and you would be 100% safe.
As practices reopened across the country there were those that in spite of doing everything perfect, had to close down again, and again. Through no fault of their own, no lack of dedication in additional cleaning and ppe usage. So forgive us for our conservative approaches, adjustments to our older office setting, the severely reduced number of appointment times available, our additional requirements of orienting to the new way to practice and how to utilize more touchless processes for our intake processes and payment methods. In consideration, we had always felt like we had more effort in cleaning, more time between appointments, more awareness of working with people who were immune compromised and informing people when we got our annual flu shots. Perhaps the real key is this awareness of how we could continue to do these things and yes, even wearing masks. We have to consider that there seems to be significantly less colds and flu this year. Even now that I have my two vaccines, there is still a concern, a new strain that is more infectious, a constant awareness that I have the honor to practice with people such as you, that may be immune compromised, may need to take extra precautions and have been doing your best to see you and your families through this challenge too.
During this time this website suddenly became a problem with multiple scam comments each day. So of course I shut it down a bit and still have not enabled comments. I have appreciated all the cards, calls, texts and facebook messages and staying in contact with many of you. In the meantime we grew a bunch of veggies, I reconnected with my sewing and embroidery, read a lot of books, have been doing a lot of writing with my dear husband, maintained a good amount of volunteer work and did our best to support our family, physically, spiritually, mentally and fiscally, through this ridiculousness. I have not completed watching all of Schitt’s Creek or The Crown, I did manage to finish The Queen’s Gambit though.
So, I look forward to Spring, seeing a few more of you in the future and hearing about your adventures, misadventures and things you have been doing during this odd time.