I first learned of turning positive after being prompted to call Mike L upstairs around 5:30 in the afternoon. “Yeah, umm..Ron, you tested positive...you can't stay here.” I work in healthcare and if you are carrying the virus, you become persona non grata very quick. I could not stick around others who are on death's door for other medical reasons. They didn't need my viruses to usher them through the door of Eternal Peace. At that moment of the phone call, I had felt fine, just great.
I didn't have any of the usual symptoms and for two days straight I began to wonder if I was a false positive or had a very mild case. On the third day things changed. I began to have those tell tale body aches that have always signaled to me something was up. “Well, if this is all it is, I'm lucky,” I thought. That night, I awoke around 3AM with a coughing fit that was startling even to me. Why even to me? Because I've smoked like a chimney for decades. Yeah, I know, I should quit and I have before. But the this cough I was having was different this time. It wouldn't stop.
I sat on the edge of the bed and coughed non stop for 60 to 90 seconds straight. That doesn't sound like a long time but most people, even when sick, cough for a few seconds, then stop. I didn't. After three cycles of coughing like that, it stopped and I sat there sucking in air as fast as I could. It was then I was hit with a memory from 17 years ago.
My brother had cystic fibrosis and I remember seeing him, with both hands on the bathroom sink, coughing as long as this to hack out the pus and blood. Once he threw that mess into the sink, he'd stand there for a good minute, sucking in air as fast as he could. I thought that peculiar as I had never seen him breathe air in so fast before. I never asked about it for months till curiosity got me one day to ask.
He told me, “When I cough like that, I'm not getting 'air' and when it all stops, I breathe like hell to get it.”
I felt that at 3AM that night. You greedily suck in air like there isn't enough on the planet to satisfy you.
There was another thing I felt as that happened. Panic. Most times I've felt panic was in my gut. I've felt it as I locked up the brakes on 95 because some sleepless truck driver decided to cut in front of me w/o looking and I tried like hell not to slide under his trailer. THAT kind of panic really emanates from your gut, and boy, do you feel it. What I felt this time, was dead center of my chest. It felt like my heart, and all those important vessels that entwine your lungs were sending out SOS messages. A ball of panic right there. “WARNING!! Where's the oxygen????!!!” I now know what my brother felt and probably what people feel when they drown, incredible panic in your chest.
I had bouts of this for about three days till my immune system figured out a way to beat covid's ass. Then all was fine. I could chuck that into my “Things I Didn't Want to Have in My Bucket List but Get to Experience Anyway.”
*****
I found out what it means to be a leper too, in a small way because of covid. Weeks later, I had stopped off at my favorite Quickie Mart run by those Jordanians when I realized I was still wearing all that PPE on my head from work. They guy behind the counter mentioned it and I said, “Oh dammit, I wear this stuff all day long and I forget it's even on my head.” I handed him my money and nonchalantly say to him, “Ah, it doesn't matter anyway, I already had covid.”
He darts a look at me after putting the cash into the register and starts pumping gobs of hand sanitizer into his hands and rubs it in. I go on telling him what it was like to have covid then quickly realize, by reading his face, that I should shut the hell up. I then start trying to explain to him what antigens are all about and how I'm pretty much marked IMMUNE from covid here on out but no matter, I was a filthy disgusting leper to him.
I went to a different Quickie Mart for a week after to avoid any embarrassment and probably to the relief of that guy too.
So, I have had covid naturally and my body has developed a defense against it. I also have had the first series of the covid vaccination and that to my body is a booster shot. My body has been in the gym working out against covid and is probably all pumped up to slam down any covid that dares to pokes it's nose around the corner at me.
You do not need to avoid me now. I'm clear. I do not have to wave a bell and yell “Unclean! Unclean!” as I walk down the street like they used to make the lepers do, by law, in Medieval Europe of old.
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