Forced from the Gym by Covid
not to belabor the point but wow this virus sucks.
For the past five days, I’ve been in the grip of illness symptoms I can only call psychedelic, like nothing I have ever experienced. I took an at-home COVID test two days into them and it came back negative, so I figured this was an epic, Victorian-style case of the flu, but today, I was feeling dizzy every time I stood up from the couch, and even lost my balance several times in my living room. This is hardly a regular occurance, and it was then that I remembered that I can take a comfortable 15-minute walk to Urgent Care, especially on what appears to be the last sunny day that San Francisco will experience before a Biblical deluge consumes us tomorrow.
When the sweet nurse in a fruit-print sweater told me that the swab tested for 3 strains of the flu + COVID, of course I took it, but I wasn’t expecting much. After an hour of waiting in the private doctor’s office, said doc came in to go over my symptoms with me and give me an exam. He said my lungs sounded normal, that nothing seemed to be wrong with any of my other organs either, good. And since I’d been waiting for an hour and the lab test was ready in an hour, he went to check on that.
“This says you have COVID,” he said.
“What?” My head started spinning, but thankfully from sheer panic, rather than worsening symptoms. He gave me a prescription for Paxlovid, informing me that because my symptoms were right at the five day mark it would be worth taking. That’s a relief. If I had to get this damn thing, better to do so when it coincides with the blessed existence of Paxlovid, which better work more reliably than my 3 shots apparently have.
The pills are cartoonishly large, so I can pretend I’m on The Jetsons and eating a meal. I’m to take 3 of them in the morning and 3 at night for 5 days. I can do that. I asked what kind of side effects I can expect and was warned about “a metallic taste in your mouth,” which hit me as though it had been formally scheduled about 2 hours after I took the morning dose. It’s not a metallic tastes, though. Metallic is deliscious, rain and blood.
This just tastes like you were given a supplement that you’re not to chew under any circumstances and just gobbled that shit up with your canines chomping for some reason. You know that taste? But! I’m glad that my sense of taste remains in tact. I really need that one.
Two days ago I had a coughing fit so severe I truly thought I was dying for about 30 seconds. “and if that’s the case, here’s what I need to do,” I thought to myself, and planned a bunch of Important Tasks with about as much executive functioning as Romeo. I came to my senses but at least got a portion of the new book-in-progress out of it.
I’ve never been so grateful for my current underemployment and I certainly had no idea I would end up this relieved that I won’t be attending AWP in Seattle this year. I tested positive on the very day it started; gratitude can take strange, strange forms.
I find myself hypersensitive to song lyrics and really wanting to stare at bright colors. If Word had a function that allowed me to make my document background cotton candy pink and my letters bubbly and sea-foam green, I would use it. I’m truly glad that I haven’t left the house since Saturday before today’s necessary walk to Urgent Care.
I hope you’re all in optimal health or getting there. I hope, at the very least, that there’s nothing bad-mysterious going on with you physically. I hope you can afford to take the rest you need. If you’ve been through this, please accept my retroactive full-body sympathy. I tried to offer it at the time but I was an ignorant little twit. Hooray for knowledge.
