Or, what to do when you have Covid, again, but this time it kicks your ass and stays for way too long.
It was January 2, 2020 the first time Covid made it's presence known. Of course we didn't know what it was then, and I was virtually asymptomatic of all the supposed symptoms, so I never gave it a name. In July of 2020 when I was hospitalized in Atlanta GA for food poisoning, they asked me if I had had it. They told me that my lung xray showed that both lungs were covered in a white lace pattern that was particular to Covid. Alas, it finally had a name [that weird January illness] even though it had been far too long for me to test positive for either the virus, or the antibodies. So even though I lost my taste and a couple of other things I had hardly paid any attention to, the fact that I had never had a classic case of it meant that in my mind, it was history.
So when I tested positive on April 23rd with full blown symptoms, it seemed almost impossible given my "history", not to mention the pin cushion my arm had become with each new vaccination and booster shot.
It's now been 2 weeks. After 5 days my temperature had gone up to 103 degrees, and then dropped again without 24 hours. I thought I was out of the woods. I had caught up on "Gentleman Jack", watched the final episodes of "Ozark", caught up on "Outlander" and watched several other streaming series from beginning to end. It made sense. It hurt my eyes too much to read, and standing up for longer than necessary showed me just how screwball my bedroom looked when I was too dizzy to remain upright. Eventually the entertainment ran out, and my head ceased to feel like a concrete block perched on a toothpick. So just as I thought I might have enough strength to go out for a short walk around the block, I was advised that it was time to go to the hospital to check on my heavy lungs to see if there was a blood clot. Oh fun.
I'm back in bed again. But this time, I'm back to my favorite form of entertainment, YouTube University. I have so far followed a hiker through the Scottish mountains to Ullapool, watched several shows on how to plant an apple orchard, watched a young woman in southeast asia restore an entire house left to her by her grandfather - doing all the building herself, and two men build an A frame house in the woods while shooting footage of the various wildlife that hovered around during the build, written notes on growing potage gardens, saved videos on how to make fabric dyes from fruit and vegetables from your garden, dying wool from sheep and how to spin it into yarn... are you sensing a pattern here?
When I was in my early teens, I had a dream of building myself a house in the woods using all indigenous materials, right down to throwing pots and dishware from clay found in the local streams, looming fabric from locally grown fibers, and of course, growing all my own food. I was one part hippy, one part survivalist, but unaware that I was either. Within nanoseconds of graduating from high school, I found myself back in NYC, living in the east village and going to School of Visual Arts at the exact moment punk ruled the lower east side, soho lofts were filled with very young artists, and the city became the island of misfit toys. Myself included. All dreams of building homes from locally felled trees went by the wayside in lieu of homemade outfits from Canal Plastics, and staying out all night.
So here I am, in my Covid haze, reminded of the full circle that life creates and how desperately I want out. I wonder if sitting here day after day trying to find any energy I can has left my brain to simmer on the things I want most and least have, and if so, is this something we are all doing? Is it Covid or is it the state of change that Covid has created?
Or is it just getting older.
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