Dancing with Covid-19

March 9, 2021 (this morning)

CRYING IN MY CAR

I sat in my car and silently cried tears of happiness. I just received my first vaccination for Covid-19 and feel like huge weights have dropped from my shoulders. Also, I think I feel a deep (and it is hoped, an abiding) sense of gratitude for this shot! I had Covid-19 in January. A retroactive realization of perhaps just how close to death I had come. There's nothing special about my experience other than it is my experience. But my story isn't especially tragic.

MASSAGE

On January 8, 2021, I was massaging my first client of the day, and I was not feeling well. I thought it was only some mild indigestion thing but after the massage, as I washed my hands in the break room, I knew better; I was sick. I had them cancel my remaining clients for the rest of the day and left.

By the time I had got home, I was almost ready to admit that this was probably the dreaded Covid-19. My number had come up. It was my time to dance with this nuisance. Up to that point in time the thing that bothered me most about the idea that I might have Covid-19 was that I may have infected someone else, a long-standing client, with this potentially deadly virus. I called the spa where I worked and asked that they contact her and let her know, so she could take the appropriate steps.

Massage is a relatively new career for me. For years, I was an engineer and then a programmer. It was fun, but my heart hadn't been in either of them since my father had passed in 1992. Looking back I realize that I was probably just living out the life my father never had a chance to. After he passed, I just never had the same attachment to the technology work.

But massage was different. There were scientific underpinnings to it, the study of kinesiology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc. But the more I do this (just five years now), the more I see that there is as much an art as there is science in the field of bodywork.

A 'POST-TOUCH' WORLD?

Massage was interesting to me. I was fascinated by all aspects of it. I studied, read, took classes, watched videos, and was always willing to discuss it and to do it! Then, in 2020, despite all our silly exceptionalism, it became clear that the virus would eventually hit us in the west with all the inevitability of a glacier.

I was deflated. I had finally found a career I could see committing to for the rest of my life, and now it seemed we might be moving into a post-touch world. Furthermore, I felt cheated, angry, and sad. Not only that, but I was also anxious about what I would be able to do for a job. No matter where we looked in 2020, it was impossible to not see that this was affecting EVERYONE. Everyone in the world has had their life changed, affected, touched by this infernal virus. As I said, the only thing that makes my story special is that it happened to me.

INTROVERSION

As an introvert, the forced social distancing, staying at home, wasn't that big an issue for me; with NETFLIX and my Kindle, I do just fine on my own. But I have friends and clients who are highly extroverted, and I think it's much, much harder for them to adhere to the suggested guidelines. I feel for them while at the same time wanting to scream at them that they need to just stay home! But it's not my place to police them.

Then I contracted it. A client had coughed in that 'way.' And I, not wanting to make a client uncomfortable, said nothing. The clients are required to wear a mask while receiving a massage. We were both masked. And this client might not be how I caught Covid-19, but it's hard to not want to assign a cause to the effect.

SELF-QUARANTINING FOR THREE WEEKS

Since late in 2020, I've been staying with friends in Wylie. I went into my room on January 8, 2021, and self-quarantined for three weeks. I only left once to go get a drive-through Covid-19 test (which came back POSITIVE obviously).

For three weeks, I slept pretty much all day and all night. I would have chills then wake in a sweat. I had a dry nagging, unproductive cough. I had shortness of breath, nausea, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, and feeling generally weirded out. I felt like it was attacking my brain. I would awake in the middle of the night and see the wooden candleholder on the dresser started to writhe in an erotic fashion that I still can not explain. A fold in the drape, near the rod, became a playful, flirtatious mermaid. My brain felt under siege. Perceptions were off (clearly!) and dreams were bizarre and unsettling. I felt like I'd aged 30 years in just a matter of days. I felt like Poe besieged by night terrors.

HYGIENE

For days at a time, I would do very little for my hygiene. The idea of a 'hot shower' appealed to me, but I knew that in the time it took me to dry and dress again, I would be cold again. So I stayed in the same clothes and marinated in my filth.

When I finally did step into a hot shower, I felt like I had no equilibrium at all. If I closed my eyes under the shower head, I felt the world spinning and had to open my eyes again before I fell.

NOT THE FLU!

This was not just a glorified flue! My perceptions, thinking, consciousness felt unreliable and foreign to me.

My friends brought me meals and coffee and whatever I requested via text messages. They did so much for me, that I doubt I will ever be able to repay them.

Several times I would wake to what I thought was hammering. In my rattled head, I was thinking they were building something downstairs. Or perhaps hanging a picture. I would pray for it to stop. Eventually, I would get out of bed when my brain finally put it together that it wasn't hammering, it was someone knocking at the bedroom door to deliver me food that I had asked for.

I would weakly get to my feet and find my shaky path to the door. The food and drinks were handed in as I would inevitably lean against the wall. I felt so weak. I felt vulnerable.

VISITING THE ER

Late one night my friend took me to the emergency room. It was as crowded as you might suppose and my friend left me there (assuming as I had) that I would be checked in overnight.

I threw up in my mask at one point. I was disoriented and the nurses would frequently 'test me' with questions as to what year it was, who was the president now, etc. But I could barely hear anyone speak. My hearing was suddenly skewed. And not just that I could NOT hear, but it felt like my ears were in my ankles is the best way I can explain it. When someone would talk to me, it sounded like their voice was coming from the floor behind me!

But the hospital policy seemed to be that "If you're not dying, then please go home!" Which makes sense. I was only in the hospital for a few hours. And my friend came back to get me in the middle of the night. Still, the nurse there, gave me fluids, a steroid shot, took some measurements, etc. I got some benefit from the time there.

GRATITUDE

As I sat and filled out my little vaccination card and rested for longer than the recommended fifteen minutes, I was flooded with love for everyone that made today possible. The doctors, scientists, healthcare workers, the politicians who are brave enough to not run from science, and all the volunteers here today in Allen, Texas. I want to hug every one of them. They work selflessly seeing the vaccinations are performed as smoothly as any drive-thru at Chick Fila. They deserve our love and gratitude.

The healthcare workers in this country deserve a parade! A national holiday! Bonuses! Your love and respect. They are stressed to the breaking point yet they continue to fight the battle while others are crying 'Hoax. Fake news.' It may be 'unpleasant' news. The truth often is. But one thing it is not is fake. The disease is real. After catching it I resolved I would not massage another person until I had received at least the first vaccine. I worried that I would not survive a second serving.

Please wear a mask! Stay at home! Wash your hands! Get vaccinated! Please don't speak to me of conspiracies, junk science, alternative facts. My experience trumps the nonsense you read on your fringe websites 10 times out of 10.

GREAT PLACE FOR A FLASH MOB?

Time to go! I've set here so long I think the volunteers are starting to worry about me. I restart my car. Looking out my windshield I get an idea; this parking lot would either be the best or worst place for a viral Thriller flash mob! Either way, I'm sure it would go viral immediately.