Moving On

It finally happened. After two years of waking up and wondering if today was to be the day. Two years of distancing and masking and sanitizing and testing and being so cautious around my patients.  It finally happened. I got Covid.

My husband fell sick first. It started with a dry cough on a Thursday. When I arrived home from work, he let me know. We used the kind of brain biopsy antigen test I had been testing myself with weekly since forever ago. To say he did not like the procedure is an understatement.  It was positive.

I had no symptoms. My test was negative.  I quarantined, kept my distance from him, and changed all my patients to telehealth. I laid low and my test was still negative after forty-eight hours. My husband was forlorn that I would not come near him. So I thought, why fight it? Get it over with. And I got in his space and purposely exposed myself to the virus. Within a day, I noticed a minor headache and retested. Positive.

My symptoms were very mild. A little runny nose, a little fatigue. I kept my usual routine, though, just from home. I stayed active, made bone broth, drank water. Coffee tasted like metal, but I drank it any way to avoid a caffeine withdrawal headache. Actually, the worst part was the sore that erupted on my nose.  That and a dark cloud that seemed to enshroud me and hold me down.

As my minimal symptoms waned, I felt a heaviness that is difficult to describe. Like the denouement of a Shakespearian tragedy, I felt lifeless. Flat, like a stretched out balloon just emptied of all its air.

I was no longer sick; but I was suffocating. Perhaps I had not realized the mental energy I had been subconsciously expending to not get the virus, to not spread the virus. I was never afraid of getting it and I never felt I was above getting it. I did feel confident that when I got it, I would not be hospitalized or die.  

I guess I just felt held to a higher standard than let’s say, my husband. I had to be above reproach. If I should infect a patient it would have been an unforgivable sin with a fate worse than death. Like having my license stripped from me to hang my head in shame forever. Anyway, that’s how I felt.

And that day after day exhausting anticipation of trying to control something beyond my control was over. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first. I mean, I was grateful, really. Grateful I had not exposed anybody. Grateful that my symptoms were mild. Grateful that I could still work. Grateful that patients were flexible. Grateful that the timing was just right and I did not have to change my plans to travel to Texas to visit my mom for her 82nd birthday.

But sitting in that airport, waiting to board the plane, I felt crushed under the weight of it.

“I just want to cry,” I texted a close friend.

“YOU SHOULD CRY!” she texted back.

Given that permission, I just started emoting. Tears streamed down face unabashedly, right there in front of God and everybody. I wept. Tears of restriction pooled into tears of relief. I cried and the spell was broken.

I can move on from Covid. Thank God. I have moved on.