Reflections in the Covid Age

 

“Get out of the house,” my nurse practitioner/psychopharm/therapist suggests. “Get some exercise, fresh air. Take nice deep beaths, heal those lungs.” We’ve been talking about how low I still feel, weeks into my recovery, still physically weak and emotionally depressed, but even these words are inadequate in describing how I feel: it’s more like a deep cold fear I can’t shake, and I’m too exhausted to try. I know his advice is good advice. I know I should get off the couch, maybe take a shower, brush my teeth. But I don’t have the energy. 

 

I started to get sick just before Christmas. The runny nose and annoying congestion in my sinus and in my chest just kept getting worse, and that pesky cough wouldn’t go away. Christmas day started dark, gray, dreary with rain. As soon as I woke up, the pounding headache behind my eyes made me want to go back to bed. Not only was I exhausted, even after 12+ hours dead asleep, but I had such a leaden feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, like an icy finger poking around my insides, a nettling anxiety that told me something was very, very off. I had sweats and wracking chills. No appetite. Dull metallic taste at the back of my throat. All I could do was chug Gatorade, huddle up on the couch with reruns, and sleep away whole days. I lost touch, in those dead days between Christmas and the new year. Isolation took a toll. Family and friends kept in touch. Every day there were calls and texts and check-ins, people sent soup and flowers and cards and groceries. But I was alone in that existential way that we are all alone sometimes, detached, adrift, lonely. Social media and the news were too much. I didn’t want to know about the rising death toll. Someone called to let me know Dawn Wells, Maryanne from Gilligan’s Island, had died from complications of the virus, and I think I grieved for two days as if I knew her. You get a little silly, after a while. It fucks with your head. I cried watching Bob’s Burgers. Whenever I coughed and I couldn’t quite catch my breath, that chill fear grew in my root chakra. People told me to rest, hydrate. Check your temperature every hour, and your O2 saturation too. Make sure you eat nutritious food. Listen to music. Pray. 

 

Day by day, I got a little better. One day, I didn’t fall asleep on the couch after my tea and soft-boiled egg. I felt hungry again. Employee health called me, and despite never actually being examined by a medical professional, never being offered an aspirin or cough syrup, never having someone listen to my junked up lungs, I was cleared to return to work. “Ten days after symptom onset, given an unremarkable course, you’re considered non-infectious,” the doctor seemed to be reading from a decision tree. Just like that. I took this week off to use up vacation time, so I’d be able to recover a bit longer at home. 

 

My first walk, the first time I left the house-- in about two weeks, maybe, I lost count—I felt fragile, like a baby hatchling, awkwardly circling the park, blinking in the bright winter sunlight. I didn’t feel like putting on clean clothes. I wore the yoga pants I’d been wearing to bed all week (I haven’t done yoga in years) and an oversized t-shirt, a jacket zipped up to my chin, and a hat screwed onto my disheveled hair. The air did feel good when I took a few renegade breaths without my mask on, the cold wind on my bare skin. My chest still hurt if I breathed too deeply. I slipped my mask back on. Most people in the Commons wear face coverings, except for two notable exceptions—one young lady who’s all eyebrows and door knocker earrings talking very loudly on her phone, and a twenty-something jogger who likely believe he’s far too fit and far too young to have to worry about a virus that just kills boomers. I understand how they feel, I was young once too. I had my share of cavalier moments. And I understand that some of the feelings, the frustration and even anger I feel now are echoes of the last time I was given a life-changing diagnosis, during another pandemic when too many people died because of the government’s inability and/or unwillingness to respond effectually. I’ve felt this fear before, the fragility. But that’s all fodder for my next session in therapy. There’s plenty today to worry about without looking too deeply into the past. I finished my walk, feeling as tired as if I’d run three miles. 

 

People called to ask how I’m feeling. I don’t know what to say. Again, words aren’t able to contain the shapeless mix of bodily and psychological diminishment that seems to creep in every evening around dusk, like I’ve aged a decade since noon. Ironically, I’ve been talking for a while about being more mindful, and now I’m literally weighing every breath. 

 

Yesterday, I made it to the grocery store, to buy food I didn’t feel like eating, but there was something comforting about the normalcy of the activity. Even waiting in the long line was OK. I had shaved, and showered, and even washed my hair. My clothes were relatively laundered. I was part of the herd again, listlessly gliding my shopping cart, half looking at produced piled high and gleaming under too bright lights. Later, on my walk, I left my phone at home, still media fasting. I completed two loops around the park, a success I planned to celebrate with hot tea and maybe a cookie. I was able to see the sun in the bare tree limbs, the pale blue sky, fat squirrels running along brown grass. My therapist has suggested a gratitude list, and whenever I think of it, I make mental notes: sun, sky, squirrels, tea, cookie. I think about the people in my life, who all care about me. I think about Dawn Wells. And when I get home to put on the kettle for my tea, I’m feeling good as I reach for my phone. It’s blowing up. The rest of the day a blur of CNN and MSNBC and twitter and facebook. Heartsick. But for the first time in a while, my world expanded beyond my daily, hourly needs. 

 

All I could do was breathe, and let it go.