Gary Tetz

With another possible COVID-19 wave on the way, and the Biden brain trust still eager to “wallop” the profession, long-term care people have plenty of reasons to continue aggressively seeking stress relief. 

By now, after two-plus years of pandemic hell, your coping strategies are probably well entrenched. If you’re a facility administrator, I’m not going to tell anyone about that adorable bottle of Jack Daniels tucked behind the old MDS manuals in your credenza, the daily smoke break behind the shrubbery out back, the Klonopin tablets you’ve been crushing into your coffee, or the hours of “Love Island” you’re re-watching the second you get home. 

But of all the most popular relaxation techniques during this difficult time, I would guess the consumption of wine probably sits near the top of your list and mine, and why shouldn’t it? For years we’ve been hearing breathless reports of groundbreaking studies proving that it’s actually healthy and we’d be fools not to drink it — it’s basically medicine, after all. But not so fast, my tipsy, stressed out friend with the perpetually purple tongue. 

New research reported in the Washington Post recently took a needlessly inflammatory and demoralizing tone, with a headline that included the words, “No amount of alcohol is good for you.” So it appears that anyone wishing to live a long and healthy life of service in long-term care will be forced to cross this primary survival strategy off the list. I understand you’ll need to spend some quiet time reflecting on this horrible news, and I’m sorry to be the messenger.

So where do we turn now? While I do love an occasional glass of wine in moderation every hour or so, my real vice is hiking, and there can’t possibly be anything wrong with that. Except now I hear that in the Bay Area of California, hiking trails are already overrun with deadly rattlesnakes, much earlier than typical due to climate change. And unless a big, beautiful, reptile-repellent wall gets built at the Oregon border, they’ll soon be slithering across my favorite trails. 

Staying closer to home to exercise would probably be a better choice, but apparently not if it’s pickleball. I’ve been thinking of taking it up to help swat away some of my frustrations, but obsessed Boomers like me are racking up injuries from the sport at a disturbing pace. Yoga has been an occasional respite in the past, but any activity that ends with something called “corpse pose” doesn’t seem like a truly positive escape from thoughts of the pandemic’s horrific long-term care toll. 

Even one of the most time-honored ways to subjugate grief or anxiety, one you’ve almost certainly turned to from time to time during difficult facility days since the crisis began, turns out to be life-threatening. If you’re used to watching “Love Island” with a glass of wine in one hand and a spoonful of raw cookie dough in the other, you need to understand that you’re basically playing stress-reduction roulette. No matter how adorable the child is who manipulated you into buying it, unbaked cookie dough is definitely not safe. I once watched with horror as a woman I know nibbled obliviously on a scoop of the stuff drawn from an unrefrigerated tub she’d been storing for weeks in the garage. I shared my hope that her life insurance was current, and thankfully, she survived. 

Obviously, I can’t cover every tension-relief strategy in this column (and I haven’t included any illicit substances that are still against the law in some states), but if you tell me your own, I’ll be glad to share why it will probably kill you. For instance, though a recent study tied coffee to better heart health, after this devastating wine news, I definitely wouldn’t trust it, as another study debunking the first one is almost certainly on its way. Dark chocolate and meditation will probably also turn out to be lethal, along with every other popular pandemic coping tool. Just to be safe, you probably shouldn’t exercise or go to church either. 

Bottom line, whatever you’ve been doing to relieve pandemic-induced stress or “wallop”-created anxiety, I beg you to stop immediately. The life you save could be your own. Might I suggest a relaxing game of Scrabble?

Things I Think is written by Gary Tetz, a two-time national Silver Medalist and three-time regional Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Association of Business Press Editors (ASBPE) awards program, as well as an Award of Excellence honoree in the APEX Awards. He’s been amusing, inspiring, informing and sometimes befuddling long-term care readers worldwide since the end of a previous century. He is a writer and video producer for Consonus Healthcare Services in Portland, OR.

The opinions expressed in McKnight’s Long-Term Care News guest submissions are the author’s and are not necessarily those of McKnight’s Long-Term Care News or its editors.