Taking my medicine

There’s a great line from the movie “A Christmas Story,” right after Ralphie just misses putting his eye out with his brand new “official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time.”

As the narrator says, “When our joy is at its zenith, when all is right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.” Then the Bumpus dogs from next door sneak past Dad and destroy his Christmas Turkey.

I, too, went from joy to disaster the other morning. The day began happily enough when I sat down and bared my arm at the Elkhart County Health Department, receiving my second vaccine. In two weeks I’d have nearly 98% immunity from the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.

I didn’t feel smug, or special. I knew I wasn’t out of the woods, but at the least, I was in a clearing, and able to breathe just a little more freely!

However, shortly thereafter I learned from a family member that a few days earlier one of her co-workers showed up for work even though he knew he was, shall we say, “symptomatic.”

So one day after I got my shot my relative tested positive for coronavirus. Which meant my wife Jennie and I had to go into isolation ourselves.

Of course we immediately developed symptoms, which lasted about ten minutes before we remembered things don’t work quite that fast. After that we felt perfectly fine! Dutifully I called everyone I’d been near the last several days.

Then I stayed home and behaved, because it’s what we do. For the next two weeks I faithfully answered the online questionnaire that arrived each morning from the Health Department.

I remember a year ago how week to week I expected to get sick, hospitalized, and intubated. I had so many negative factors (asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes) I figured if I got the virus I’d be dead. At that time we were recording our worship service for Youtube. Each week I felt so relieved I made it alive to the recording date.

Of course I always wore a mask outside my house, and observed social distance. But although I never got complacent, I had been wondering just how long my charmed life would last! I came so close to avoiding exposure.

Ironically the day I went into quarantine I found out my old college roommate, who lives in California and had just received his first vaccine, had also been exposed and gone into isolation. Some guy came by who insisted all he had was a sinus infection, then tested positive a few days later. The play he’d written and was preparing to film for local TV had to be put on hold. We agreed it was ironic we were both the victims of thoughtless fools.

A couple days after we were exposed we both got tested at the drive-thru lane at our local pharmacy (and received our Negative results a couple days later). The COVID test was self-administered. You get a packet, swirl the cotton swab in your nose, insert it in a plastic tube, and leave it in the drop box, all without leaving your car. My wife Jennie and I took our tests simultaneously. As I twirled the swab in my nose I started to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” my wife asked accusingly.

I shrugged. “It tickled.”

Hey, you find funny where you can.

And just so you know we are now off quarantine.

Frank Ramirez is the Senior Pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren.