The Rona

My partner took our daughter to the pediatrician a few weeks ago for her yearly checkup. The doctor told my partner, Cheryl, “I’m sure you’ve all had Covid, right?” Cheryl looked at him and replied, “We’ve had very few illnesses over the last three years, and none of us have tested positive for Covid yet.” The doctor smiled and said, “I’m sure you’ve had it and just didn’t know it.”

That story still galls me a little as I sit here coughing the lining of my lungs out along with more mucus than should be physically possible to produce.

Yes, the Rona finally got us. And not, unironically, too soon after that fateful appointment. Our daughter, who arguably suffered the most during the main part of the pandemic, at least the part of it where we all voluntarily or involuntarily worked a little bit to try to keep each other safe. She had to learn from home, her grades bottomed out, she didn’t see friends for an entire year, she missed her freshman year in high school, the list, we’re learning, just goes on.

My first two-doses of Paxlovid down the hatch.

This wonderful child has bounced back resiliently, as children can sometimes do, and she now has a very active friend group and spends as much time with them as she can. Meanwhile, our boys have moved out, making our home generally less prone to the introduction of airborne pathogens.

When she came home with a cough but no other “real” symptoms, I attributed it to a possibly early onslaught of allergies. A few days passed, and she felt better, but the cough persisted. Then one morning as I worked in my home office and realized it was the time Cheryl normally goes to work but no sounds were coming from our room, I tiptoed down the hallway only to find her still in bed. “You alright?” I asked. She shook her head no. “Did you call off work?” She shook her head yes. I closed to the door and went back to work.

She was achy, which I attributed to either the flu or maybe food poisoning, but I didn’t suspect COVID at that point. She laid in bed the rest of the day, and I stayed in my home office.

Knowing I needed to prepare for a trip to Houston on Monday, I decided to pick up a fresh COVID test at the end of the day, just in case I was dealing with something that wasn’t as obvious as it should seem. That evening, as I showered, she popped her head in the door and told me to cancel my trip and showed me the two red lines.

But how, you bastard virus? How?

We’ve been careful. I like to call us the last two Americans still wearing masks on planes, but that’s not exactly true. We were just the only two American’s wearing masks on the plane on our flights to and from Mexico last October.

I’ll admit that in the early days of the pandemic, I had a lot of anxiety around getting sick. I lost two friends to COVID early on, though their spouses never confirmed whether they had other conditions that exacerbated things or not, so the confusion left many of us even more fearful. And fear made us careful. Of course, compassion helps too. I never wanted to get sick, but I worried more about inadvertently getting someone sick, especially our parents.

I remember having dreams about not being able to breathe and feeling terribly anxious about the virus itself. But we took precautions, and when the first vaccines were announced, there was a great sigh of relief in our household and a real celebration when the last of us was finally vaccinated.

Then there were boosters and the slow crawl back to some semblance of normal where the fear subsided, probably further than it should have.

My parents survived a bout of COVID, most of our friends had survived it, some with very little illness at all. It seemed that we had made it through the worst of the pandemic, but we were only looking at ourselves, a relatively healthy family with no real comorbidities to speak of. Our thoughts failed to carry over to those with immunodeficiencies or the elderly.

In that, we were much like the rest of America, and I feel bad for giving in to the hope and hype a highly politicized federal response to this virus. It should be mentioned that We The People created that mess in Washington. We continue to.

Empathy is not a collective value. It should be.

It hit me like a ton of bricks when I saw the two red lines on her test box. All the fear and anxiety came rushing back to me. Panic started to set in as I fumbled around for my priorities. I wasn’t feeling symptomatic at that point but texted some colleagues I had been in some proximity to recently. We texted the few friends we’d seen in the window of time when Cheryl could’ve been infected. And I picked up our daughter from a friend’s house and had her come home and take a test.

Her test box showed a very dull second line. She was likely on her way out of the infection. I had her text all her friends.

On Saturday, I woke up with that feeling that something is about to hit you, but it’s holding off just on the periphery. You know the kind of thing when you’re going to be sick. You’ve resigned yourself to it, you actually want it to start, so you get it over with, but it hasn’t committed to anything yet. This was a weird way to spend a Saturday. My parents dropped off soups, and the boys dropped off groceries for us in garage, which I left open for them.

We felt well cared for, but it’s lonely when you close yourself off from the world on purpose.

The full fury finally descended on me sometime Saturday night into Sunday. I woke up with a heavy pressure on my chest, congested and with these weird chills that weren’t necessarily fever driven as mine usually are. These chills were just arbitrary cold spells and even arbitrarily cold body parts like my left hand for a while and then my right foot. The top of my head would hurt physically for a bit, not like a headache, but just physical pain on the surface of the top of my head. Cheryl’s feet hurt sometimes, making it hard to walk.

We parked ourselves in the living room and could’ve used a tea IV for how many trips to the kitchen we did to make ourselves another cup with lemon and honey.

What usually breaks after a wicked 24 hours continued to the 72-hour mark, only with the addition of a cough that seemed to flay bits of internal organ off and spew them up into the paper towels I used to try to protect the house from flying shrapnel.

When I saw her positive result on Friday, I immediately sent a note to my doctor through the app we use to communicate. Unfortunately, it was after hours, and I didn’t hear back from them until Monday morning. When I did, they asked if I wanted to do a virtual meeting to see if I was a candidate for Paxlovid.

I did.

But I had to get through a horrendous Monday that truly was the worst of the five days of this so far. Monday was just blur of brain fog, more cups of Rooibos than I can count and watching the entire second season of Mandalorian while freaking the cat out with coughs that make his hairballs seem tame by comparison.

In taking some liberty to make light of what is really a scary experience, please know that it’s probably just something I need to do as for my mental health. This shouldn’t reflect my feelings about COVID and especially about the seriousness of the illness and the fact that it remains deadly to so many. And in no way do I want to take anything away from anyone else’s experience, especially those who did not survive. I truly realize how privileged I am to have been educated enough to take the government mandates seriously, to get the vaccine and now to have access to Paxlovid. If you are in this category with me, you are lucky too.

Today is Wednesday and hope slowly returned like a sunrise this morning. I woke up still feeling like death, but after a shower, a productive lung-lining removal session and a cup of green tea, I’m ready to face the world virtually at least. I emailed my boss and told him I could work on next week’s podcast, as listening to audio wouldn’t be as mentally taxing as dealing with social media comments.

Cheryl went back to work today, as she is clear of the isolation period, she has tested negative and she pretty much works outside, so I’m alone and debating on going for a walk, because I’ve pretty much been inside since last Friday, and I hate it.

My doctor said the lung-tearing cough could be around for weeks maybe even months, and that I should not be surprised if other symptoms don’t entirely disappear in less than a month. So, thank you, my fellow Americans! Thank you for fighting the mask mandates and for doubting vaccines and for just generally reminding others of us how low empathy can actually get when you live in the land of the free-from-the-truth and the home of the brave-as-long-as-everyone-agrees-with-me.