Ridding Ourselves OF The Unwelcome Guest Something To Be Thankful For

One of the things I’m most grateful for in life, day in, day out is good health. It’s a cliché, but its true,,, if you don’t have health, you don’t have anything. Granted, if you’re sick and have a lot of money, you can perhaps get enhanced health care and buy more remedies. But that still doesn’t make for a good life. The list of rich and famous people taken down by cancer or heart attacks is a lengthy one. So having decent health, along with a few people who care about you along for the journey, are really the things that matter. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a middle-aged guy and I have issues like almost anyone else. I have to check the ingredients of almost everything I eat because of food allergies; there seem to be some kind of pollens in the air for about eight months out of the year that keep me making allergy pill manufacturers richer. But all in all, I feel good most days and that I celebrate every day. Now even more so now that we had the unwelcome visitor of Covid come to our house last month.

I remember when Covid first made the news – over two years ago, when it was being called the “corona virus” and there were only a dozen or so cases known over here. When it was largely confined to one or two Chinese cities – I rather thought it was overkill and hype from a bored media. But as pro sports began cancelling months of their schedules, awards shows were canceled and the daily death count in the U.S. began to rise, I took note. And took it seriously. So too did my sweetie, and the “kiddo” , her daughter who’d just joined the workforce not long before.

We did things we were supposed to. Mostly, we all wore masks every time we went out into some store or enclosed place. And we did that a lot more sparingly than before. Recreational shopping became passe; trips to Walmart or the supermarket for necessities, which we navigated as quickly as possible were about the only such excursions for us for over a year. we tried curbside deliveries. We helped make Amazon richer by the month; if it wasn’t at Walmart or the HEB (the local supermarket) and we felt like we needed it, it was coming through the mailbox via Jeff Bezos & Co. We tried to watch those little cutout footprints on store floors and keep our distance from other shoppers. Sitting in a restaurant became as distant a memory as thinking leg warmers or parachute pants were cool. I became a habitual hand washer; the ladies went through jug after jug of hand sanitizer. And it worked.

Thankfully, for two years or so, we avoided Covid. Personally, I felt like I was healthier than almost ever before. I went a full winter without anything resembling a cold or flu, something of a rarity. But it eventually caught up to us a couple of weeks back. Because of course, no matter how careful you are yourself, you’re fighting a losing battle unless you also jettison everyone from your life who doesn’t take the illness threat as seriously as you do. That we didn’t do. Suffice to say some members of the extended family had grown tired of things like masks or hearing the news tell of the death toll topping one million from the illness in the States; they figured the threat was over, if there ever was one to begin with. They lived their lives just like before the pandemic.

So Father’s Day weekend came around and we spent a little time with a family member who had a bad throat. We tried to keep a bit of distance, but didn’t think all that much of it, especially since they’d had some dental work days earlier and had been having oral problems from it. We even went over to my sweetie’s eldest. He and his wife cooked us a lunch. When we left, sweetie and I both felt a little short of breath, wheezy, but that wasn’t unusual since there are friendly – but free-shedding – cats there who do set off our allergies.

When we got home, my sweetie was worn out, and slept for most of the rest of the day. That night was hellish. She began coughing. I was dead tired…but couldn’t get to sleep. I tossed, turned, sweated, and had a headache like never before. A pounding sinus headache, periodically interrupted by lightning-like jolts through my head. Finally I got to sleep mid-afternoon Monday. Napping is something I normally do about once a decade, but it was the only option this time. My sweetie coughed some more. Neither of us felt like eating anything.

I got a good sleep that night, for maybe 12 hours, alternately sweating like a sauna visitor and shivering, it seemed. Indeed, the next day I could barely pick up a plate to take to the kitchen because I was shaking so much because I felt cold. It was over 100 outside, and the AC wasn’t set on “Arctic” by any means, but I pulled on a sweater. Then pulled a winter blanket over top of me. Meanwhile, my sweetie’s cough was getting worse and more continuous. Thankfully she took my advice and called her doctor.

Turns out her doctor was off then…with Covid himself. But they set up a teleconference with an associate of his. He had her take a test – one of the government-issued ones – and she quickly tested positive for the dreaded illness. Not a surprise given the symptoms and that we’d heard the other family member and his wife, had gone from bad throat to having Covid too. The doctor prescribed her Paxlovid, something a doctor friend of ours had said was the best thing out there. They were probably right. She started to take the med that night, and by mid-day next day, she was coughing a whole lot less…something to really be thankful for.

Around that time the kiddo came down with the symptoms too. And so it went. For four or five days, I had almost no energy. Walking to the kitchen was a chore that required lying down for ten, twenty minutes afterwards to recuperate from. The shivering/sweating cycle continued for days. Miraculously, I didn’t develop much of a cough, but my nose was running a marathon for several days.

In time, it ran its course. Now, two weeks later, we’re all back to normal-ish. We’re lucky for that, and for maybe not catching it until now. The dominant strains – BA4, BA5, I think – are a little less lethal than the first round of the illness which killed many of the 1 050 000 people in this country who’ve died from it so far. We’re all getting back into the daily routine, work and chores and everything else that you miss more than might expect when incapacitated. Even with that, things aren’t quite the same as before. “Covid brain is real,” my sweetie’s commented. The mental fuzziness many have described hasn’t been severe for us…but has been real. She’s needing more notes to remind her of some routine things at her work. I have this blog, but also post a daily music one. I’ve put over 3000 posts up on it so far. Writing the blogs takes a little thought, of course, but actually publishing it is something I could normally do in my sleep. But several times this past week, I’ve had to stop and ponder how to do something dead simple – post a link to a video , eliminate excessive space between paragraphs. And there’s that taste loss people talk about. Real too.

My sense of smell, or lack of, is a family joke. We can drive by a poor dead skunk, and I’ll see it but not smell it. One of the ladies will ask “what’s that burning smell?” and I’ll respond “what smell?” It’s not acute, and nor I presume is my sense of taste. Hot sauce on everything basically. But for all that, I do have a sense of smell and taste. Or at least, did. After a few days of Covid, it became noticeable to me I couldn’t taste some things I used to. For instance, coffee. I drink a lot of coffee, often quite strong. I can taste that. But suddenly, it began to seem like just warm water to me… a whole level of flavor had disappeared. I added more grounds to the brews, but nothing. I’d stick my nose in the coffee jar and inhale…and smell nothing. Likewise, some IPA beers I had on hand…quite strongly flavored. But not now (curiously, the light lagers which always have little flavor taste the same as ever to me.) I can detect sweet, and spicy hot, and a few other basics but all in all, my sense of taste is probably half gone. Hopefully it will come back; even today I noticed I could taste a little of the meat and hot sauce in a sandwich I had, something I don’t think I could have last week. Maybe someday I’ll smell a skunk and cheer.

So, things are getting back to normal, slowly. And that includes me being thankful every day for good health. I recommend you do the same if you’re feeling good…and put on a mask if you’re going shopping, or to a restaurant, no matter how passe it might feel by now.