Miserable.
That’s what I am.
Not my personality or my outlook on life, which I have been told both are.
Physically miserable.
The symptoms started on Sunday, slowly at first, like a geriatric runner getting back on the track after a long hiatus.
Monday morning the fatigue took off like a Peterbilt with no brakes on an icy incline. Sometime during the night someone must have slipped a water buffalo into my skull because it was non-stop pounding and tussling.
I needed to take a COVID test but that would have required maximum effort to get the blankets off me and my feet on the ground.
Eventually I made it to the bathroom—amazing how quickly one moves when they don’t want to vomit in bed—and the first COVID test came back negative.
It, obviously, was relief because three years into this mess I still won’t go indoors without wearing a N-95 respirator, outdoors I do go maskless (my concession to back-to-normal) but if people are in close proximity to one another in cramped quarters the mask rehomes itself over my mouth and nose like a faithful life-saving falcon.
But the negative result was perplexing because I haven’t knowingly crossed paths with anyone COVID-positive and I did get my flu shot last fall.
The days since have been filled with fever, body aches, chills, nausea, light headedness, interrupted sleep patterns.
To confirm that I didn’t have COVID I took a second, and last free, test shoving the swabs up my nose so far that might explain why I occasionally feel confused, and disoriented. Lying down on the kitchen tile at 2 a.m. seemed like a good way to combat the heat and fever but waking up a short time later left me wondering what I was doing, where I was and why there was a cat on my head.
I reveal all this not for sympathy or pity but only in light of what happened yesterday.
The National Public Health Emergency on COVID came to an end and many of the programs that were created or boosted with funding and resources will see those disappear over the next few weeks.
But COVID isn’t over (and neither is my illness) but I can’t help but feel sympathy for the people who contract that disease and have a worse experience even than mine.
