Hey there strangers, how have you been? I guess it’s only been a week, but I feel like I’ve been down in the pit of COVID forever, you know? But now that I’m mostly out on the other side, I’m restless, but still not allowed to push myself, so you get a blog post since I’m back to being able to handle screentime.
So, COVID.
How did it go this time?
This was my third rodeo (the other two acquired in travel scenarios in 2022 and 2024) and my worst one for how I actually felt. I think I've kept with recommended boosters pretty well. My last shot was December 2024.
I don’t know how I caught it. I work from home, so I don’t interact in close quarters with many people. I wasn’t traveling or spending time with anyone obviously ill, but I did go to a cooking class and go grocery shopping last weekend, so those are my best guesses.
Monday: Woke with a bit of a sore throat and stuffy head, but ignored it. After all, “stuffy head” is almost my natural state with seasonal and dust allergies and tired is sort of normal for me too, between being over 50, parenting young adults, and perimenopause. It’s everyone’s favorite game of “Am I sick, or is this just how life feels now?”
I went about a very busy day of work, taking the Kiddo’s bestie to a farewell breakfast (they're leaving for college), and taking the Kiddo out to the community college to get set up for next semester. I can only hope I didn’t actually infect anyone while I didn’t know I was ill.
Tuesday: Definitely didn’t feel good.
Slumpy is the best descriptor I think.
I still worked. Luckily my day job allows me to work from home and I could space out on my office sofa between meetings. I was having some weird gastro-intestinal feelings similar to how I felt before my gall bladder went bad, so I put in a call to my doctor and got a Wednesday appointment. Can’t say I put in my fullest 8 hours ever, but I muddled through. I was supposed to take the Kiddo to an open house at the college, but Sweetman took that over when it was clear how bad I actually felt. I took an antihistamine and went to bed at 8:00 p.m.
Wednesday: I already had the day off since I was supposed to help move the Kiddo’s bestie into their dorm. Sweetman took that duty over. It was clear I could NOT handle six hours of driving (there and back) and hauling boxes and the like. Sweetman suggested a COVID test because even though I had taken an antihistamine (which normally knocks me out like I’ve been punched by Mohammed Ali), I had a thrashy, restless night.
And damnit, yes, COVID.
So, quick change of plans. Doctor’s visit moved to virtual, then cancelled all together and rescheduled for next week. They offered me Paxlovid, which I refused because so many folks I know who’ve taken it just end up getting sick twice, with a rebound case.
The day went by in a haze. I had a viscous headache that felt like a steel bolt had been driven through half my head, so mostly I laid around, moaned, and went back to sleep. Any kind of screen time spiked that pain, so I barely connected with the outer world at all.
Our family protocol for other illnesses has been to isolate, so I washed my hands really well and put on a mask whenever I had to venture out of the bedroom for dog care or sustenance seeking. It was all I could do to make myself consume Lipton’s chicken soup and some water.
Once Sweetman and the Kiddo were back, we packed him up and sent him to a hotel because I wasn’t so sick I couldn’t see to myself, and we wanted to prioritize keeping him from catching it–the sofa isn’t a great option for that tall man and we don’t have a guest room. He’d already been exposed, of course, sharing the bed with me during those first two nights, but so far he had no symptoms and was testing negative. Kiddo and I stayed home, acting like we lived in adjoining apartments and communicating only by text. Elder Kiddo (grown and flown) brought me some takeout which I ate more of than I would have anticipated being able to consume. Bedtime and antihistamines again.
Thursday: Set an alarm so I could ascertain whether I might be able to work or not. The answer was definitely “NO!” That searing headache was still there, and I’d had a horrid night of thrashing, acid reflux that led to vomiting.
I called it, suffering through a few minutes screen exposure to let my manager know and put through my leave request. This was the worst day in terms of how I felt. I drifted in and out of consciousness, and took extra showers to try to open my head a little with steam.
Of course, because I was unable to get my brain to function, there were things to deal with. The kid was in a fender-bender accident on their way out to the college to register for classes. Now that I’m coherent again and have gotten the full story, I’m super proud of how well they handled that very stressful situation and still got out to the college and got registered. Poor Sweetman had to abandon his work early to trade cars with the kid and help handle the logistics. When they tried to talk to me about it, I couldn’t focus at all and wasn’t sure later if I hadn’t fever-dreamed the whole thing (yeah, the dreams have been WILD this whole time).
Sweetman swung by in the afternoon to drop off supplies and, masked up and gloved, helped clean up some of the detritus of my being sick for several days, taking out the garbage and bringing more supplies upstairs for me, handling one of the dog outings so I wouldn’t have to, then back to the hotel with him to keep him well if possible.
When my headache finally broke around supper time, I watched a movie (Ballerina, 2025). Great movie, but a bad idea and I went to bed with a returned headache that made it hard to sleep.
Friday: Woke with that same searing headache and called in sick once more. That pretty much finishes my sick leave for this year. I can be sick (and paid) for 12 more hours in 2025 (and it’s new that contractors like me even get sick leave at all–so there’s a small favor). Despite the headache, I fumbled through dog care in the morning (masked up for movement through the house), trying to leave the Kiddo free to get themselves out for an appointment.
After that, it was back to bed for me. Miraculously, after the next round of napping, my headache was gone. I was smart this time, though, and still stayed 80% offscreen all afternoon, only using my phone a little and that with the brightness turned as low as it could go. It was clear something had broken, because I was restless. I had the energy to feel restless. So I washed up and masked up again so I could do a couple of small things around the house like take my dirty dishes downstairs, and put on gloves so I could wash some of the dishes at low risk of infecting the Kiddo or Sweetman.
At 3:20, I got a text from my cover artist, asking me if our zoom meeting was still on (it had been scheduled for 3:00). After apologizing for ghosting her (who knows what day or time it is in COVID land…and staying off screen meant I wasn’t obsessing on my calendar like I usually do), we decided to still meet and I spent a lovely half hour looking at pictures from her trip to Iceland (SOOOOOO gorgeous–I definitely need to go there) and at sketches for the first of three covers she’s making for me.
I was energized by that–this whole process is so exciting! And the zoom meeting had NOT given me a headache (HURRAY!), so I spent my afternoon working on writing life things. No actual writing–my brain wasn’t that good yet--but administrative stuff like updating my submissions tracker, submitting a couple of stories, adding my “about the editor” page to the interior design of Not Too Late, and getting a wild hair about resurrecting a short story collection called Shadowhill that I had intended to bring out in 2020 as my first indie project, but dropped when the world went pear-shaped.
There’s a nice symmetry to resurrecting that sucker while recovering from the illness that killed the project in the first place, so I sent an email to the original cover designer, found my then-editor’s information, and went looking for files of what I had already done. It’s actually really close to done–already through edits and I’d done some layout, so if the cover artist is able to come back on board, I might be able to get the book out there pretty quickly. That’s exciting!
Looking for those things put me on some data maintenance, getting files moved over from the old laptop onto this new one and throwing away a bunch of old files that aren’t important anymore. I’m terrible about downloading things for one-time quick use and then letting them linger, taking up memory for decades. It was such a relief to be able to be back onscreen without pain, that I didn’t even mind the tedious tasks. They were probably about my speed, mentally speaking.
It’s been a long time since I was a night owl. I generally turn in a pumpkin by 10:00 most nights. But after several days of forced inactivity and feeling joyful about being able to use screens without pain, I watched movies.
I like old movies all the time, but especially when I’m in recovery of one kind or another, so I decided on The Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935 because it had a young Clark Gable in it and I had never seen it. I’m going to need to read that book sometime, I think because it was fascinating! What is it with sea captains and obsession, huh?
Even though it was late when I finished the film, I didn’t feel able to sleep yet, and I was going to try a night without antihistamines to knock me out. So, I picked another film: How Green Was My Valley, 1941, with Maureen O’Hara. I’ve been a fan of Maureen’s my whole life, probably from the first time I watched The Quiet Man, 1952, with my mother when I was little. The glory of her red hair was absent from this black and white film, but she still shone like an angel and you could definitely see why Walter Pidgeon lost his heart to her.
It’s a very sentimental story, but has some very real human drama, centering around a large Welsh family of miners, or colliers as they called them, and narrated by the youngest son. It’s based on a novel by Richard Llewellyn by the same title which I have not read, but the plot bore a few striking similarities (with less sex) to Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence, which I have read. A little research tells me that the book was touted as autobiographical, but that’s a stretch as the author was English-born and had spent very little time in Wales at all.
After that I slept again.
Saturday: As I write this, it’s noon. I have only a little headache. Morning was a little rough–getting my bodily systems online–but I’m definitely doing better than I have all week. It’s already clear that I’ll be struggling with making myself take it slow for the next bit to avoid relapse.
I’m watching a silent movie this morning, Sunrise, 1927 because the description caught my eye: “A married farmer falls under the spell of a sophisticated woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.” Janet Gaynor who plays the wife, is the only actor in it that I think I might know, but I wonder if I’m mixing her up with Mitzi Gaynor, a more recent actress (I checked: they’re not related). George O’Brien, who plays our main character, is quite good.
Silent films are always kind of amazing. The acting style is entirely different when actors cannot use their voices to convey emotion and the photography is often startlingly beautiful. This one has some very cool effects like a ghostly image of the temptress character shown over the man when he’s struggling with his conscience and the animation of title cards. Fonts, carrying emotional weight since 1927, apparently. The way the words melt and slide off the screen when our temptress proposes drowning was very effective.
Wish me luck, y’all. For the next couple of days, I’m probably my own worst enemy and I’ve fought her before–that Samantha is stubborn and not entirely reasonable. But this Samantha will fight her to make sure I’m back on my feet for real as soon as possible.
Oh, and maybe go update your COVID shot, if that's an option for you. I know our government isn’t pushing vaccinations anymore because some insane guy thought it was a good idea to put an anti-vaxxer with a worm-eaten brain in charge of such things. But I enter myself as evidence: the virus is still out there. And it still sucks, even when it goes as well as it can.
