Yes, It Can Happen To You

I gardened that day. Pushed wheelbarrows full of rich loamy Oregon compost to the raised beds and worked the fertile goodness into last year’s soil with a digging fork. It was sunny and warm. Small drips of sweat ran down my forehead. I opened up the irrigation from its winter’s sleep, then stuck my head beneath a gushing spigot and took a long, cold drink of water. It was Friday, March 20th.

I ate a good dinner, after a good day’s work. By 8 p.m. my stomach ached and there were deep rumbles in my belly. Not good rumbles, but the kind that makes you think, “Oh no, I’m going to need a bathroom soon.” I also noticed a strange burning sensation at the entrance of my nostrils, and I felt shaky. I chalked it up to not running the irrigation long enough to clean the crud out of the pipes from sitting all winter. It must be that. It was bad water. I went to bed at midnight not feeling too well.

At 2 a.m. I bolted up out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom, barely making it in time to contain the most violent letting go my body has ever endured.

I felt feverish. A burning thirst gripped me. I had a horrible, skull-crushing headache and felt my body freaking out inside, like a panic attack in my chest. My heart raced and pounded, even though I felt calm in my mind. It was the first of many times to come that I would feel separate from my body.

At 6 a.m. I was still awake and realized I was really, really sick.

I called my parents who are retired Emergency Medical Technicians, to get some advice. I drank a glass of water. Fifteen minutes later it evacuated my body, along with any remnant food in my system, leaving a hot ache in my kidneys and sharp burning pains in my intestines. My face was flushed red. My heart was beating erratically. A strange weakness and pulsing ache coursed through my thighs and sometimes my arms. And that goddamn invisible fist in the middle of my chest squeezing hard trying to suffocate me. I couldn’t breathe. I would go through the motions of breathing, but the lungs couldn’t take the air in all the way.

I slept sitting up, afraid that lying down would be the end of me. Fatigue was so bone-deep that I would have to talk myself up in my head, like a cheerleader, to walk to the bathroom from the chair where I sat fifteen feet away. When I finally found the energy to get up and walk, my legs shook from weakness and threatened collapse. And the brain fog…I looked at the sink for a very long time but could not remember what it was called, until I made it back to the chair and slowly it came to me, “oh yeah, it’s a sink.”

On Day Six I felt better.

There was slightly less pressure in my chest and my energy surged. I felt almost high. I wanted to go outside, plant seeds, water the garden. By 8:30 p.m. that night, the symptoms came slamming back with a flush and a fever, and a crushing headache. The beast sunk its teeth in deeper.

It would be sixteen more days before the fever, chest pressure, and shortness of breath would let up, or before I could eat anything halfway solid that stayed in my body. The fatigue? It was acute for three months, and now eight months later, I still have episodes of exhaustion along with heart arrhythmias, major hair loss, and what I call “squishy” migraines that last three to four days.

Covid does strange things to the brain.

I was in denial for the first few days at symptom onset. Thought it was a stomach flu, poisoning, anything but what it was. My brain told me it wasn’t that bad, tomorrow it would go away. My fear told me to deal with it, to not go to the hospital no matter what - that’s where people with Covid go to die. So I stayed home. Alone. For twenty-three days it was just me and Covid and my two cats, and one of them got Covid too. The cat bounced back in five days and handled it better than I did. She would jump up on my lap in the chair and put her head on my chest as if to comfort me. As if she knew what I was feeling.

Twice I called close friends sobbing, “This is so scary, I’m so scared.”

But no one could understand. I was too scared to get a test. Scared I’d get sicker from more exposure or worse - would expose someone else to this godforsaken bug. I felt too weak to drive. My doctor helped me via phone and video calls. On one particularly bad day, I called the Covid-19 hotline and asked the nurse, “If I do come into the ER today, what can you do for this?” Her response, “Nothing, unless you can’t breathe then we’ll put you on a ventilator. Otherwise, we’ll send you home and tell you to do what you are doing.”

At the beginning of May, after I tested negative, a friend came by to see me.

We walked through my garden, her shoulders were stiff and tense. She was quiet and I was wearing an N-95. I wouldn’t hug her. I was social distancing like they told us we should do. She finally blurted out all her anger at me for not treating her like I used to. She said, “You shouldn’t have gotten that sick. It’s not normal. You need to find a specialist and find out what is wrong with you. I never knew you were scared of dying, it’s a good thing to know about a friend, that you’re so scared of dying you won’t hug me and you keep wearing that damn mask and I can’t even see you smile.” The sting was deep.

Others asked, “How was the test, did it hurt? Did you get a test?”

I responded, no I didn’t drive myself thirty miles to town to get a test while I was sick. My doctor counted me as presumptive positive. Then the familiar subtle smirk, the smug, “Oh I get it,” wink, wink. Some people’s denial was so strong, that if I started talking about having Covid-19, they would cut off the conversation or find some reason to explain that my illness wasn’t really Covid, I just thought it was because I listen to the news.

There is a local store that carries healthy food and gardening supplies. It used to be my favorite store in our community. When I was well enough to go buy chocolate and chicken compost, I walked through the front door wearing an N-95 mask. I was the only one in the store wearing a mask. People looked mockingly in my direction, some chuckled and shook their head, and no one, I mean no one was even trying to pretend to be careful. There was a tip jar on the counter that had a sign taped to the front, “Have you heard the joke about Covid? Don’t worry, you won’t get it.”

I feel so angry when I see the numbers of Covid-19 deaths, the numbers of people who are getting this virus daily.

Not all of them will go to the hospital. Some will never have symptoms and will be spared the agony, wondering what all the fuss is about. Others, like me, will stay home and tough it out as best they can. And some will never come home.

If we had known it was airborne in January, if we had all worn masks all year, if we had cared more about strangers standing in line in front of us at the store… maybe we wouldn’t be facing the darkest winter of our lives.

Last week I visited my doctor for blood work and an EKG to check the status of my heart. She said, “You know…you can still get it again. The research shows the only sure immunity is for ninety days.” I tried to fight back the tears, “Does a broken heart show up on an EKG?”

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In case you’re doubting this is what Covid feels like