Links in bold
I am now an official survivor of the worst pandemic of all time. Guys, I don’t know how I did it. But I did it.
A quick paragraph about my condition before Covid. I had a septoplasty and turbinate reduction surgery on August 19th, followed by 10 miserable days with nasal stents. From August 30th, when the stents were removed, to October 9, when I came down with Covid, I had a variety of weird sinus symptoms. I had a nice old-fashioned cold in the 3rd week of September.
I mention this to underscore that when I experienced a particularly annoying bout of sinus symptoms around October 4, I thought nothing of it. It’s just the post-surgical adjustment, I thought, and disregarded it.
On Sunday, October 9, I felt those telltales sings of a cold/flu coming on. I had a dental appointment on Monday, so I texted my dentist and told her that I didn’t feel quite up to coming to our appointment. On Monday, October 10, I was out of commission. Slight fever (100.5F), muscle aches, headache, the works. I slept most of the day. On October 11, I was 50% better, in fact, strong enough to go outside. I got a Covid test at a pop-up site down the street, went right home and rested.
Never have I experienced as dramatic an improvement from a previous days’ misery, and I’ve my share of colds and flu. I grew up in a smoking house before the huge public health push against the habit. Every spring I’d come down with a bad case of bronchitis, undoubtedly brought on by the unhealthy environment in my home.
My parents felt a great deal of guilt about this, which I exempt them from—everyone smoked in those days. But I think it gave me a life-long susceptibility to respiratory distress. I mention it to point out that I’m intimately aware of how I respond to respiratory ailments.
In the days following, I improved exponentially. I feel completely fine now, except for a tendency to cough when I lie down.
Yesterday, I got a call from the NYC Health Department. It seems that those pop-up testing sites are government snitches pretending to be independent health providers. Nurse Ratched just wanted to know how I was doing.
“I’m fine,” I said, offering no more information. To her (sort of) credit, she didn’t push the conversation further, and concluded our interview.
I am infuriated that my results were released to a government agency but… that’s our world now.
I wouldn’t even write this except to point out that I’ve had cold and flu that were far worse than this. This was really nothing, and if it were weren’t COVID I would probably have forgotten about it already.
I’m not denying that for some, COVID was the bad virus that pushed them over the edge. But for me, it was no big deal.