I’ve retraced my steps more times than I can count.
Was it the Indego bike? Or the park bench in Rittenhouse Square? Or the 20 minutes in a suspiciously open club, drinking free wine after dinner two Saturdays ago? No one else got it. So, why did I?
The minute you become a public health statistic, your brain uses its last functioning neuron to conduct a panicked whodunit. It’s all you can do to maintain a sense of agency when your body’s under constant assault, each day less predictable than the last. It’s like, I may feel ashamed of whatever poor choice got me here, but at least I was in control. I miss being in control.
Last Wednesday I was experiencing intense congestion, itchy eyes and throat. I chalked it up to allergies from the change in weather. I’d just run three miles on the trail where the snow was melting and surely mold spores were rampant. Still, I couldn’t shake the unfamiliar fatigue that stopped me at three miles when I set out to run five. I told myself I didn’t time my coffee properly and I should have eaten more—the usual suspects when I come up short. But the fear lingered long into the night as I thrashed in bed. My first shot of the Pfizer vaccine was scheduled for 2:40 PM at CHOP the next day through a program for school personnel. And goddamnit, I was getting that vaccine.
Within a few hours of the shot, I was couch-ridden with a fever. I knew a fever was a common reaction, but as time passed and I continued burning up, I grew wary. On Saturday when I still wasn’t better, I had Andrew take me to Personic Health Care: a drive-through testing site in Springfield that takes insurance and offers both rapid and PCR tests without an appointment. Within ten minutes, they called to alert me that I was positive. Cue the tears.
The days to follow were brutal. Per the suggestion of my colleagues—one who had COVID, another who does right now as well (no, we have not seen each other), and my boss whose dad’s a doctor—I overnighted a pulse oximeter from Amazon to monitor my oxygen levels. My breathing was becoming increasingly labored and one morning, I woke up choking for air. I checked repeatedly and kept reading in the 80s, and all research points to seeking medical attention when you’re that low. Alas, I spent that evening at Penn Hospital where I had bloodwork done, a chest x-ray to check for pneumonia, multiple oxygen tests, and an EKG, all of which I passed with ease. So maybe janky devices aren’t worth the $25 and maybe I was short of breath because of anxiety but I can’t tell you how worth it that hospital visit was for me, if only for a night’s peace of mind. I’ll worry about the bill later.
Things have been up and down since. I’d heard (and shrugged off) that COVID was a boomerang experience—one day you’re better, the next it’s back to square one. I can attest to that now. Two days ago I was tidying up the house, cooking dinner, working on commands with Mousse thinking I must be on the upswing. Then yesterday I felt like I was on Mars. I stood in the shower while Mac DeMarco’s “Chamber of Reflection” blared from an old yellow JBL speaker on the sink and wondered if that was where it’d end for me, naked and unshaved, nothing meaningful left behind, alone again, alone.
Today’s not much better. I’m impossibly weak and my brain is so foggy that I don’t know how I’m writing this. I’ve Googled “COVID brain fog” and “COVID brain damage” enough to feel short of breath again. How terrifying it is to host a novel virus and wonder if your healthy, young body will ever be the same. People keep sending me soup and I don’t think I realized just how loved I was before this. For love is warm (even if I can’t believe it) and so is soup (even if I can’t taste it). Some days I wonder if I’d be better off dead but this week I learned it is much better to be alive. Alive and well. Bear with me here.
I feel rude as hell enjoying reading about you having COVID because of how good your writing is.
Brain fog is common.. I’ve been dealing with this since last November. If you don’t start to feel better in two weeks look up Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and message me. It’s scary but you will be fine. I’ve spent enough nights awake telling myself I’ll probably die in my sleep that it doesn’t even faze me anymore because I’m still alive and have not died from lack of oxygen. So fucked right? Lol