July 21, 2024

another covid anecdote

Welcome to the Sunday post.

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I’m going to start as many forthcoming Sunday posts as possible with a reading recommendation that might help readers cope with the ongoing and growing crises, of which there are many.

I’m nearly done with Mutual Aid by Dean Spade, and have come across some extremely helpful ways of thinking about some of my past relationships with collectives and groups (many of which soured after the group had to confront the same kind of issues we were trying to fight outside the group). I’m trying to work on this old stuff for myself in order to prepare myself for coming back to group work. My therapist once told me, in the face of hopelessness/helplessness, to try to focus on what’s going on locally, even hyper-locally—such as, do you know your neighbors? Who among them has cancer/is unhoused/is facing eviction/needs food or other support? What can you do locally to help others? I’ll write more about this in upcoming newsletters.

And now for another covid anecdote.

I’m offering this because I found it helpful when I had covid—to search out and read about people’s varied experiences, and also when I talked to the people in my life who shared their experiences with me.

I had my first positive covid test around 12:30am one mid-June evening this year. In the afternoon I had what felt like an annoying post-nasal drip itch in my throat. The winds were up so I figured I was feeling allergic. But as the evening wore on, I started feeling feverish and not well. Since March 2020 I’ve had one cold (March 2024) so any feeling of illness now stands out to me. I got out of bed and took a covid test. From that point on, I separated myself from my family as much as possible. I got a pillow and blanket and sequestered to the tv room to try to sleep. Most worrisome to me at that point was that two days later I was scheduled to go on a plane to the Pacific Northwest with my kid, and now I for sure was going to have to cancel the whole trip. I was thankful I’d had the foresight to purchase travel insurance, but the thought of loss of money on the trip and potential income, depending on how sick I might get, worried me.

In the morning, we started what would become protocol in our household for the next 16 days.

My family masked around me, and I masked around them. I took over the bedroom I usually share with my partner and she moved into the ADU (“additional dwelling unit”) which is also my office, in the backyard. I still had to share a bathroom with my kid, but toothbrushes were separated and we used the bathroom ventilation fan often. We kept as many windows open throughout the house as we could. When I got bored of being in the bedroom, I carried a sheet, hand sanitizer, my tissue box, throat lozenges, and my haggard body to the tv room, where I closed both doors, opened the windows, and ran the ceiling fan nonstop. Whenever I moved back to the bedroom, we sanitized the remotes and the doorknobs and let the room air out before anyone else came in.

The first day was the worst for me, mostly due to fever and chills. My partner ran me over to the Kaiser medical office near us and I got a PCR test to confirm—but mostly for the benefit of the travel insurance company. I had lost over $1000 in hotel and event tickets and wanted to recoup as much as possible, so PCR test evidence was necessary.

I talked to two different medical professionals—the first who told me I should go to the emergency room based on a number of questions she asked, the second who affirmed my decision to not go to the ER and, like me, didn’t understand why I’d been told that when my symptoms were so mild and I don’t have some of the markers that might put me at greater risk (we suspected a faulty algorithm!). I was given a prescription for Paxlovid. It cost me about $32 with my insurance. For the five days I was on it, my mild symptoms were wiped out. Though I had to cancel some clients there was one day where I had the energy and ability to work remotely and I did—again, motivated by the concern about losing income. The second day I was supposed to work, and the second day after being done with the Paxlovid, I got hit with a number of symptoms I hadn’t even had originally—I felt like I had a terrible sinus headache, stuffy nose, energy loss, and brain fog. I had to cancel clients. The symptoms continued, lessening only slightly, over the next few days.

While in the tv room, I found myself wanting to watch…things I don’t usually watch. This led me to the docuseries Six Schizophrenic Brothers and the first season of the tv show The Purge. Nothing light or uplifting there! At some point I decided I would rewatch all five seasons of The Wire, and that was pretty much my mainstay for the rest of my illness.

There were days when I was feeling a bit better, had mild symptoms, but my energy was tanked. I had to take my kid to cooking camp because my partner was working, so we got in the car, both of us masked, windows down. I eventually got back to work, but only scheduled two clients a day, then worked my way up to three then four. As I got better I noticed that at the end of a typical day I felt more tired than usual. There were several days when I thought, I feel 85% better, and I’d feel disappointed that it wouldn’t go beyond that. I found it monotonous and exhausting to move from room to room with hand sanitizer, and masks, and thinking constantly about how to make sure my family didn’t get covid from me.

Then I started to feel 90% better. Then 95% better. And still I was testing positive. Occasionally my family had dinner outside with me on our picnic table, and even then I was paranoid they’d get sick from me.

After 16 days I tested negative. My family managed to stay well during that time, and I’m grateful for that—but of course I have to wonder what the outcome would have been if we didn’t have an ADU in the backyard for my partner to sleep in, if we’d had closer, cramped quarters in general.

The most I’ve taken from all the anecdotes I’ve read (I dropped into reddit more than I ever have while I had covid) and listened to (friends, both IRL and online) is to REST. To rest even when you feel like you have energy again. To not overdo it AT ALL. This was one of the weirdest, hardest things for me. Look: I am someone who would gladly laze around as often as possible. In the past two years, I have been exercising more than I ever have in my life, and as I like to tell my friends, you wouldn’t know it by looking at me! Lol. I ride a stationary bike a couple of times a week for a half-hour, I go to the public pool three to four times a week for a gentle exercise class and a more active Aquafit class, often doing those two classes back-to-back twice a week. I hike with my dog at least once a week, the equivalent of what is 10-16 floors according to my iphone app. If we don’t hike we pay $2 to park and walk for a couple hours on the path in Santa Monica by the beach. So not doing any physical activity or exertion was strange but also welcome, and I was ambivalent about it often (the same might be said of all the chores I let go of, too). However, everyone’s adamance about REST and how it might protect you from long covid symptoms convinced me to slow way the fuck down. And once I was testing negative, I went back to the pool. I went from one class to my back-to-back classes over a couple weeks time. I haven’t hiked yet, but I’ve returned to the bike—easy, 20 minute, low impact rides. I’ve returned to my light weight arm work, which was always basic to begin with. Next week I’m going on a vacation with family where the main order of business will be resting in and near a pool, and going out in the evenings for a light walk. Maybe the following week I’ll wake up early one day and take my dog for a hike—which I would do with extreme consciousness about not over-exerting. I’m overjoyed to say that I feel 100% better but I’m paying deep attention to my body so I can continue feeling good.

To give more background to this anecdote: my family and I had never had covid until I got it in June 2024. When we meet up with friends and family we meet outdoors 90% of the time and mask if we’re indoors. My partner wears her mask indoors in public and at work. My kid is the least cautious, and I have to remind her to mask. She often doesn’t (13 years old, a hard demographic to work with, I do my best), but somehow she managed to avoid covid the entire school year mostly unmasked. Like my partner, I wear masks in public indoors. I work from home and run few errands, and spend much of my routine outdoor time at a public outdoor pool or a massive park that isn’t ever crowded when I’m there. I can tell you exactly how many times we ate at a restaurant indoors in the past 4 years—twice—only because we were in weird circumstances where we had to. We’ve gone to a couple of movies, masked, 10:30am showings with less than 5 other people in the theater, but I’m also able to pay for recent releases to stream if I really want to see it, and have, and will continue (pretty much an indoor cat!) All of this to say: we have been on the cautious side for the most part. In the weeks before I got covid, we went to two outdoor concerts. And in the weeks before I got covid, I let up my mask-wearing adherence a few times—once when getting a haircut next to an open screened door, another at the dentist office, another walking through a small shop that had both doors open and good air flow so I felt safe. My family was at the outdoor concerts with me and didn’t get sick. Of course I’ll never know for sure, but what I do know is that I’m back to wearing masks in all public indoor spaces again.

While I had covid, I also realized something: that in the past four years, watching people on social media meet up in spaces I’d usually go, like book readings, had irked me because 90% of the time, no one, or very few people were masked in the photos. I felt like celebrating anytime I saw a gathering indoors where everyone was masked (interestingly, the photos were usually of queer NY readings). Unconsciously I found myself retreating further and further just as people were starting to get more and more comfortable being unmasked in public indoor readings. Only when I had covid did I realize I was feeling bad, even low-key resentful, that people didn’t seem to take covid and its effects seriously. Go read Care Work, people. Please do some Disability Justice readings in general. I would love to join you all again but not until there is care and attention given to the most vulnerable who want to frequent the same spaces you do. I can guarantee you that if you live long enough, this will matter to you even if it doesn’t now.

Stay safe, everyone. Take good care.