I've Got the Post-COVID-19 Blues
I suppose that there is never a good time to get COVID, but the first week of school was not ideal.
On Thursday August 24th, I woke up with a mild sore throat. Nothing to be too concerned about—I have allergies, ginormous tonsils, and I sleep with a CPAP. I have an annoying little sore throat almost all of the time. I thought nothing of this one. I went about my day as normal. I went to work and had a pretty average day. My sore throat had gone away, but then I started to feel kind of achy about halfway through my ten hour shift. When I tried to eat my dinner that was leftover roasted chicken thighs, roasted potatoes, and green peas, I could only eat the peas and potatoes because the chicken would make me gag when I tried to eat it. Chicken that I had eaten with relish just a day or two before. The nausea, the aches, and the fading sore throat began to point toward something more than seasonal allergies.
My coworker showed up about fifteen minutes late and that set in motion a grueling trip home by public transit. I ended up getting home after 2:30 a.m. I was bone tired. I was so tempted to just go to bed, but I had this nagging voice in the back of my head that told me that I had to take a COVID test first. I found our stash of tests and grabbed one. Through half-lidded eyes I took the test, and then set the timer for fifteen minutes. I was still masked in a KN95 from my trip on the CTA, just in case. I sat down in my recliner, closed my eyes, and waited for the timer to go off. Part of me was certain that I was going to test negative, and that this was only a precaution. Another part of me just knew that I was going to be positive.
The timer went off, and I shambled over to the kitchen table where I had taken the test. And there it was: a two lurid pink stripes on the Binax test card—what internet wags refer to as “the forbidden lollipop”.
This was not unexpected, but tears filled my eyes, and I was suddenly hit with a wave of what can only be described as grief, fear, and guilt. Grief because until that day, I had been COVID-free, a Novid, as internet wags like to say. I had a peculiar pride in going more than three years without being infected, but here was irrefutable proof that I was no longer safe. Fear washed over me because I am in a few high risk categories. I’m diabetic, I have hypertension, asthma, I am conidered “morbidly obese”, and I am over fifty. Even though I am vaxxed and boosted, I still wondered if I was at risk for hospitalization or worse. Will I get long Covid? This fear spiral was suddenly stopped in its tracks by an overpowering sense of guilt. Guilt that I had unmasked indoors because I didn’t want to feel “weird” at my internship interview. Jennifer and I had discussed whether I would mask at my intership or in my CRSS classes—I didn’t want to at my internship, but the more we talked it over, the more it made sense to mask at both places. I felt guilty and foolish for abandoning my safety plan because of imaginary social pressure to go unmasked in my internship interview—my interviewer would not have cared one whit if I remained masked, but it felt strange to me, so I didn’t. Was this where I was exposed? Who knows? Masks are not perfect, and I was on an interminably long and absolutely jam packed bus ride where no one else was masked. There are so many places I could have been infected. I alerted my boss by text because I was afraid that I had infected one or more of the clients (I had not). After this, my thoughts went to warning a sleeping Jennifer about my infection. I sent the following text:
I slept fitfully that night on the couch with a mask on, certain that I had infected Jennifer and feeling horribly guilty about it. When I woke up, I barricaded myself in my office, a.k.a. “The Plague Room” as internet wags like to call it, and wrote a self-flagellating Facebook/Instagram post about how I would never forgive myself if I infected Jennifer. And I meant it. I never forgive myself for anything, no matter how trifling, so why would I forgive myself for something so potentially devastating? Especially since Jennifer is also in the high risk category as well.
When Jennifer woke up, she tested herself. She was thankfully NEGATIVE! I have rarely been more relieved in my life. We then set about creating a protocol to keep her uninfected. We would avoid each other as much as possible. I would be barricaded in the office, and she in our bedroom (where her office space is). These would be the only places that we would go without a mask. We have two bathrooms, so we did not have to worry about sharing one safely. Thankfully we had purchased a really nice air mattress in July for my sisters’ visit, so I had a place to safely sleep unmasked. I would not cook while infected, and we would eat meals apart in our respective bunkers—at our desks like goblins. We masked while in the common areas of the house. The cats lived in absolute confusion for the almost two weeks where the doors to our bedroom and my office stayed shut for most of the day. They constantly played the game of “Let me in!/Let me out!” with Jennifer, and to a much lesser extent with me. We opened most of the windows of the house and left the AC on for the comfort and minor filtration of the air. I shudder to see our electric bill for this period, but it was necessary. Jennifer bought two HEPA filters (one for my office, and one for our bedroom), and a Captain Awkward reader generously donated a massive one to us that can clean the air in all of the common areas every hour. Guys, we did what we could to keep Jennifer safe.
And it worked.
She remains COVID-free to this day.
Thank goodness.
Today I finally tested negative, and Jennifer and I ceremonially doffed our masks, and I cooked breakfast for the first time in a long time. And we got to eat together at the table in our dining room. Something we had both been missing. We got to see the lower half of each other’s faces in person for the first time in a long time. We had a couple of FaceTime dates, but that’s just not the same.
As for me, I was really sick for about three days with fever and chills, major fatigue, and other flu-like symptoms and then mildly sick with runny nose and congestion until Labor Day. All told, I seem to have fared relatively well. I am still terrified about long COVID or suddenly having a stroke in a few months. Coronavirus is nothing to trifle with after all. So many people died (1,139,457) that it was like a large city, just under the population of Dallas or Philadelphia perished in three years. Everyone I know has either lost a family member or friend to this disease or watched as a loved one has been disabled by it, either from the initial sickness or long COVID. But you would never know it by how we are behaving. Infections keep rising, and most of us are just acting like nothing is wrong. This disease will be with us forever because of a large minority of selfish idiots who refused to be vaccinated because of whatever cockamamie bullshit they had ingested from YouTube or from jagoffs like Robert Kennedy Jr., Ye, or Joe Rogan. I don’t know and I don’t care why they refused. All I know is that we are going to be having COVID season like we have flu season forever—don’t even get me started on the people that refuse to get their flu vaccines. I didn’t intend for this to turn into a rant, but here we are. Gonna wrap it up before I make myself more angry. And I need a nap—the fatigue of COVID doesn’t seem to be lifting just yet.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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Oof, sorry that your COVID-free streak has ended... very glad that you're on the other side of it now, though, AND that Jennifer remained uninfected.
I hope you can give yourself grace. You didn’t fail, society failed you. I continue to mask indoors although I am often the only one. If I’m going to get COVID-19, it’s going to be from my mom or my sister, both of whom have stopped masking, even though my mom is in treatment for lung cancer.