My guide to healing from COVID
COVID made me forget just how much I despise getting sick.
Then it gave me a personal reminder.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. By the end, I’ll explain how I discovered a way to not even notice the symptoms of COVID-19. But first, I need to retrace steps involving a chocolate fountain, a trampoline, poison ivy and munching on staples.
Our story begins when I was in eighth-grade. It’s the first time I recall not getting sick during the school year, an era when binge-watching was pretty much limited to how many Lucille Ball shows you could watch in reruns.
Then I made it through high school without missing any days.
Same thing happened again in college. And pretty much throughout my work life.
Not that I haven’t gotten sick during my career. It usually struck while I was at work (once while alone at 2 a.m.) and I had no choice but to get the job done.
There were also days I should have stayed home and not shared flu symptoms with colleagues. But somehow I’ve only used one sick day since eighth grade.
As a consequence, I don’t do sick well. I couldn’t imagine anyone being worse at it ... until I met my son.
A few weeks ago, The Kid starting hurling chocolate bunnies the day before Easter. I started the countdown, reasoning I couldn’t dodge this one.
But time passed, and a few weeks later we all finally felt safe enough to go out to dinner.
While I was chomping on a chimichanga, the waiter checked our status. Like a low-rent magician, I reached into my mouth and pulled out a metal staple.
All I could think was “Why do we even need staples anymore? Paper seems so passé.”
The waiter looked horrified. Or maybe he just wanted to see what else I could pull from my mouth.
“Don’t worry about it. Accidents happen,” the Kid reassured him during a rare break from inhaling his quesadilla.
The waiter told us dessert was on the house. I was done. The Kid savored his free chocolate volcano cake. It was not the image I wanted to see at the time.
Still, I survived.
Over the following weekend, we ventured to a Danbury restaurant and ordered bar appetizers. After gulping down a dubious slider allegedly cooked “medium,” I cut open a second one.
The meat was redder than the blood of an American who scoffs at mask mandates, cooked beef and Nancy Pelosi.
The Kid finished and went outside with Mom. I summoned the waiter and performed another magic trick, cutting open the remaining sliders to reveal the bloody contents.
“I’m not asking for anything,” I said. “I just want to save the next person who orders this.”
How ironic. I survived White Castle sliders through four years at Fordham, only to be vanguished by a pale imitation.
Yeah, I got sick the next day.
This, gentle reader, is why restaurant inspections are so important. The staple incident wasn’t even my first time chewing metal at a restaurant. I once pulled a wad of steel wool out of my mouth at a Greenwich eatery.
I’ve long appreciated that Norwalk posts online ratings from restaurant inspections conducted over the prior year (graded by lighthouses).
Stamford started doing the same more than a decade ago. I always tried to be sensitive to reporting on restaurant inspections. I once had an owner bark at me during lunch because we documented them at all.
After Staff Writer Ignacio Laguarda inquired about the absence of updated health reports, the City of Stamford removed the website that graded by smiley faces. Officials attributed the gap to a “digital transformation.”
Most other towns don’t bother posting such valuable public information. One town in the Valley never reports restaurants failing inspections, which implies there are none. It would be nice to believe that’s true. For me, it’s just a town where I’ll never dine.
Accountability in the preparation of food can’t be allowed to slide in the wake of the pandemic. But that’s not what delivered COVID to my doorstep.
I was chaperoning The Kid to an evening event when I noticed something in the corner of the room that should be forbidden: the dreaded chocolate fountain.
“We’re all doomed,” I declared to my wife.
Chocolate fountains would be a bad idea at the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Annual Conference (that’s a real thing, though they lose points for planning next year’s convention in Florida).
But chocolate fountains during COVID in a room full of kids? Ugh. There are cooties everywhere. You might as well let them play the Twister Slime Challenge (again, a real thing. I keep thinking I’m making something up, only to discover new ideas are even more rare than my sliders).
Larry David could spin a full “Curb Your Enthusiasm” season off why chocolate fountains are never wise. I’m sending my draft of a bill to ban them to every
There were also days I should have stayed home and not shared flu symptoms with colleagues. But somehow I’ve only used one sick day since eighth grade.
Connecticut legislator.
Now, I can’t prove The Kid was sent home from school with COVID because of the fountain, but I also know he ignored my pleas and smuggled some chocolate-dipped marshmallows into his tummy. From there, it was as simple as “tag, you’re it” and I flunked a COVID test for the first time.
The Kid slept for 12 hours the next day, a personal best. That seemed to cure him, as he wouldn’t let me rest at all. The following day, when I thought he was finally ready to go to bed, he slipped outside to rebound on the trampoline. I passed the time clearing brush from the yard.
I let him bounce until he was ready to collapse. Alas, I did the same, without washing up.
The next day, I was covered in a poison ivy rash.
There is good news. Itching everywhere means I no longer notice any COVID symptoms.