A COVID POSTMORTEM

I have never been so excited
to see a room full of trash!

It’s over. My days of COVID are behind me. Hello, normal routines. I’ve missed you.

 

There was almost a skip in my step as I walked to the elevator to take my recycling and rubbish to the garbage room in my building. I always delay making that trip, the heft unnecessarily bigger that it should be, but this time all that accumulation simply had to be. It was about being responsible. If there’s a rat or two lurking and feasting behind the food compost container, I’ve spared you from COVID. You’re welcome.

 

After unloading my discards, I detoured to the building’s gym. It’s a small space though well-equipped. You have to sign up. One person per hour. Not sure if that was always the case or if it’s a COVID measure residents decided to keep. Sharing is so overrated. I’m skipping today for good measure, sticking to the cycling routine that’s helped keep my sanity these past ten days. My biceps will feel the burn tomorrow. So happy to return to the familiar nuisance of excessive workout perspiration instead of fever sweats and muscle aches in lieu of headaches.

 

One of the tasks I accomplished during 
my quarantine was organizing my ice
cream? Who even has that as a task?!

I’ve been itching to grocery shop. I tried to tell myself that masking up and buying orange juice was justified in the name of self-care and recovery, but then I kept picturing the super friendly clerk who only works Sundays and, even if she wouldn’t be at the till, I still carry some of that “We appreciate you!” sentiment for service employees from the early days of global lockdown. Later today, I’ll grab a basket and buy fresh produce while restocking my ice cream supply. (My freezer was never in danger of running out of Ben & Jerry’s. I know how to Be Prepared in case of emergency even if I dropped out of Boy Scouts before I got a single badge.) I might buy orange juice and the ingredients to make the cornbread I’ve been craving these past ten days, but suddenly I don’t have the appetite for either. 

 

While I was bummed COVID finally tagged me, I’m glad I outran it for the first two and a half years. This latest strain, while apparently easier to get, is milder—suitable even for wusses like me. My first positive test came just before I went to bed one night last week. It made for a bad sleep, in part due to coughs and sniffles, but more embarrassingly on account of the kind of irrational worries that love to come out and play at three in the morning. 

 

If I have to go to hospital, will I catch something worse. Meningitis? Flesh-eating disease? A missing leg from them amputating the wrong limb from the wrong patient? 

 

Will I freak out if I’m hooked up to an IV? Answer: Obviously. Will they respond by removing my vocal cords? Likely. Healthcare workers have been through enough.

 

What will it be like if I’m put on a ventilator? What if they perform a tracheotomy?!

 

I’m not making any of that up. I should remind you, it was three in the morning. (I shouldn’t share that I can be just as panicked at ten in the morning after a tasty latte and a solid rest.) Once a tracheotomy entered my mind, all sleep was off.

 

In truth, there was never a moment when I came close to calling an ambulance, walking over to the hospital or even calling my doctor’s office. For most people, COVID ain’t what it used to be, thank goodness. The media was moved on, even if I occasionally stumble on reports listing the number of people in intensive care and still too many deaths. Friends didn’t check in after initially responding to my Facebook post with obligatory sad face emojis. My mother only checked in twice, via text. I might have played this song if I’d thrown myself a pity party, but I didn’t think of it. It might have been a nice break from strangely obsessive thoughts about cornbread.

 

Thank you, WestJet.

When you show up late for COVID, everyone’s response is Been There, Done That. And I’m glad about that. I was inconvenienced and I missed out on big, end-of-summer plans. I had to cancel my trip to Ottawa. No family cottage visit again this year. (I’d gone every summer, without fail, my whole life. Haven’t been now since pre-COVID, 2019.) No chance to see my aunt, uncle, cousins and their children who’ve grown so much in my absence. I had to suddenly change my RSVP to one cousin’s wedding. All this had financial implications as well. I’m out hundreds of dollars. WestJet and Hotels.com were good about refunding or crediting otherwise nonrefundable bookings under the circumstances, but I’m still battling a car rental company and Air Canada epically failed in terms of customer service. “People lie about their mothers dying,” the agent said. Um, how does that relate to me?  It seems the company’s default stance is to presume their customers are liars. Nice. You can guess what airline I won’t be flying in the future. Still, my health is most important.

 

My COVID ended with a fizzle. Like a balloon that neither bursts nor gets swept up by the sky but just deflates into a smaller deformed blob and gets tossed in the wastebasket. I’m glad there was no final wheelchair tour of a hospital wing with dedicated nurses and orderlies cheering me on as they mumbled to one another, “So glad that big baby’s gone. Didn’t you just want to unplug his ventilator?” I didn’t even have to part with any precious items in my sticker collection to seal a thank you card to an attending physician. And, yay, I still have my senses intact to smell my scratch ‘n’ sniff ones. (Why do I love the root beer stickers so much and yet never buy the drink?) Instead of any fanfare, I just stuck a Q-tip up my nose for the umpteenth time, set the timer on my phone and read an essay about Ann Patchett’s love of knitting. Not persuasive. I have an intense fear of needles so there’s no way I’d pursue some craft for which that’s basic terminology. Don’t care if they’re not those needles. I’m 100% needle-averse, just as I am to all stings…with or without The Police. 

 

I am a delicate soul.

 

When the timer went off, I knew the result even before I looked. Negative. At last. Thanks, universe, for knowing how little this delicate soul can take. This is good karma for those soda bottles I picked up on the path in Whistler in July, right? Think I’ll keep that up. 

 

I’m celebrating. Might even head to A&W to get me a root beer, frosted mug and all, being as I can dine in again. Ice cream to follow, naturally. Life is good.