It happened. Twenty-eight months into the pandemic, I got COVID. I kind of knew I’d get it eventually, but part of me also thought that because I’d escaped it so long my amazingly powerful immune system, which I fuel every day with vitamin D, sunshine and confidence-boosting Instagram Reels, somehow made me invincible.
It started with a tickle in my throat. This tickle, I thought, is no big deal. I’d felt poorly and tested negative a half-dozen times the last few years. Maybe this will pass, too. So, I went to bed with a plan to reassess in the morning.
Here’s when I knew something was up. I slept through the night. I never sleep through the night. I usually get up at least once to toss and turn and think about all the mistakes I have ever made in my life. My kids also wake me up a lot. We have two small kids, and they have nightmares (mainly about bears breaking into the house, which, silly kids, rarely happens.) Also, sometimes around 3 a.m. they loudly declare their intent to go potty, which for some reason requires daddy’s attendance (in case there are bears).
But not this night. This night, I slept hard. I didn’t once wake up and think about how I should have skipped football my senior year to focus on drama.
I woke up and felt that my throat had swollen. My job is cool about me working from home when necessary, so I stayed home, and, as the day went on, I felt worse, so I took a test.
The test was the one the government will mail you for free. One can say the federal government’s response to the pandemic has not been amazing, or consistent, or logical, or coherent, or filled with common sense, or, at times, existent. But two things I am thankful for – the fast creation of the vaccines and the free tests, which you get from the website that’s so easy to use that whoever designed it should now be in charge of all government websites and the Cleveland Browns.
I took the test, and the second line (indicating positive) emerged. In bold. It was like, immediate. There may have been an airhorn, I’m not sure. No doubt, I had it.
After working all day in our kitchen, I wiped everything down and moved my most treasured belongings (my pillow and Yeti) into our home office, which has a futon, so as not to infect my kids, as well as my wife (whose reward has been to take on my share of the child-driving and child event attendance duties – you’re welcome, baby.)
Once again, I slept through the night. It was the kind of sleep only teenagers get – totally dead to the world for an impossibly long time, waking up in the same clothes worn the day before, no idea at all what time it is.
Because I now felt even worse, I took the day off. It was only the third day I’d ever taken off for being sick at this job. The other two were in late 2019 when I was so sick and scarily short of breath that I had to go to urgent care, where – true story – the nurse said I had an infection that looked like pneumonia but wasn’t pneumonia. She didn’t know what it was. Days later, news came out of China about a mysterious cluster of cases of something that looked like pneumonia but wasn’t pneumonia. I know. Right? We’ll never know.
My head felt like it was in a vice, my throat was sore, and my sinuses were full. I spent the day sleeping, which is an activity that I highly recommend. I’m a person who never takes a day off work because I’m a weirdo who likes work, but it felt amazing to do nothing but finally watch “Step Brothers” and rest. (I finally get all those Catalina Wine Mixer jokes everyone was making in 2008 – hilarious, guys.)
I went back to work the next day (from home) but took it easy. It is extremely difficult to tell when a journalist like myself is taking it easy, but if you looked closely, you would have seen fewer active verbs were used, and I allowed for more extraneous adjectives than usual. There may have even been a misplaced gerund. Without proper rest, words become confusing when written.
Every day, I felt about 10-20 percent better, and about six days in I was back to my old self. According to the data, my experience is common to most Americans who are catching COVID-19 during this summer wave. You get sick, it kicks your butt a little, you get better and move on.
Which brings me to my point. (This has a point?) As a species, human beings are uniquely talented at taking amazing things for granted, which is why I’m making an effort to not take this moment for granted at all.
Had this been two years ago, there’s a chance this could have been a more painful and perilous experience. Instead, it was like a bad cold, but never like a bad cold I thought might kill me. I have nothing but profound appreciation for all the doctors and scientists and health professionals who made the vaccines and boosters possible and easy to access, and to everyone who has taken this pandemic seriously, making it easier for the rest of us to manage. For those of us blessed enough to only experience mild symptoms with no long-term effects, COVID is a blip, a minor irritation to get past so I can get back to worrying about other things – like bears.