LOS ANGELES — For Giancarlo Santos, holiday parties are typically a free-for-all of revelry, with friends and family spilling into every corner of the house, and Christmas decorations twinkling everywhere.
This year, Santos will get to enjoy the decorations as he receives treatment for an aggressive type of cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. But holiday celebrations at his home in Chino, California, will be strictly limited to his wife, Michelle, and their three children, who will be wearing masks and maintaining a safe distance from their 46-year-old father.
"I'm not normal; this is all abnormal," Santos said from his hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His children "are ready for the pandemic to be over — hanging out with friends, going out, taking kickboxing classes," he said. But they've met him halfway, getting vaccinated and wearing masks to protect their dad, whose disease has left his immune system unable to protect him from COVID-19's deadliest ravages.
