Catching Covid Again
I don’t believe in superstitions, like knocking on wood when you say something like, “I haven’t gotten Covid recently,” but after my last bout with Covid I’m keeping a two-by-four handy, just in case.
About two weeks before the Super Bowl I said to myself, “Hey, it’s been a year since I last had Covid.” Cue the knock on wood.
It was a Sunday afternoon. I was relaxing, having changed out of church clothes in order to watch the NFL Conference championships. Suddenly I noticed a sniffle. Hay fever from the cheery fire blazing in the fireplace? Or maybe, just maybe a regular cold?
As the game progressed the sniffles were joined by a little scratchiness in the throat. I ate an orange, took an extra Vitamin C, and an allergy pill. For good luck. And I threw another block of wood on the fire instead of knocking on it.
However, by nighttime I took a home Covid test just to make sure. Whew! It came up negative!
But Monday morning I felt awful, and made the decision to work out of home that day. By Tuesday I was sure I had a bronchial infection, or something even more serious. I made a call.
Our doctor’s office has a special respiratory entrance where you get ushered into an isolated room, get tested, then treated by people who are gowned, masked, and gloved. It reminds me of the Andromeda Strain, that old movie about the alien virus. My throat was swabbed with a long Q-tip – no problem since I have no gag reflex – and ten minutes later a nurse stuck her head in the room and told me I did not have Covid. Hooray!
Five minutes later she returned to say, actually, I did. Have Covid. I had contracted it. C’est la vie!
I had also contracted a bad battery in my car! When I went out to start the car the battery had died, and I was stuck until I was rescued.
Last year the primary symptom of my Covid adventure was sleepiness. This year I was pretty miserable – but not horribly so. I knew I was sick because I didn’t have an appetite and nothing sounded good, but I didn’t lose my sense of taste or smell. I drank a lot of hot tea laced with honey from my bee hives. I stayed away from the gym so I wouldn’t spread the joy. In the end the worst thing that happened was my covid morphed into the bronchial infection I thought I had in the first place and ended up on antibiotics and steroids anyway.
Fortunately I’d stopped at the Nappanee Public Library a few days before and picked up a copy of the oral history of The Big Bang Theory. I read that, and a short book called Marigold and Rose, about the internal monologs of two newborn twins, and also did some writing. finished up some assignments for a couple of publishers.
I’m back in the gym, which feels good. The best thing was, after staying away from my Weight Watchers meeting for three weeks because I didn’t want to spread the joy, I still lost a pound and a half.
Well, that’s it for another year. Or at least I hope. I’m not sure how long the immunity you develop lasts, but it won’t be forever. In next year if I get the sniffles instead of knocking on wood I’m going to use it to clobber Covid over the head.