Four years later, masks finally coming off at UVA Health doctors offices

I had a doctor’s appointment at UVA Health today, my annual follow-up from the pulmonary embolism that almost took me down in 2021.

Good bit of personal news from the visit: I don’t need to keep seeing the specialist.

Apparently, I’m as good as I’m going to get with the PE.

I’ll miss him.

Nice guy.

He doesn’t like baseball, but other than that.

The other bit of news: beginning May 1, which is, as I’m writing this, tomorrow, you’re no longer required to wear a mask at a UVA Health facility.

Missed it by one day.

It was the talk of the staff at the office.

“They’re going to be, like, that’s what you look like?” the nurse who drew my blood and took my vitals told me, saying she has patients who have never seen her without a mask on, and that she has never seen without a mask on, either.

What comes to mind here is the “SNL” skit from 2020 about young folks at clubs recoiling in terror when a potential paramour de-masked, and didn’t look as imagined from the eyes down.

She said she was sure there were going to be some surprises tomorrow.

“The guys, it might be like, how long have you had that mustache?” she said.

In the first six months after my PE, I was at doctor’s offices and hospitals a good bit, but things have fortunately calmed down for me in that respect.

I guess I expected, walking up to the front door today, to be asked to wear a mask, or that it could be a possibility, at the least.

But, damn, it’s 2024 now.

“It’s been more than four years,” my nurse said. “That’s hard to believe.”

I said to her something along the lines of, you’re going to feel liberated when you go to work tomorrow.

“Oh, I’m off tomorrow,” she said. “But I’ll be checking in with everybody to see how it’s going.”