I've been sick since graduation, the same whatever I've had all semester. I wake up with a headache, a sore throat, and I'm so exhausted getting out of bed is a chore. I end up sleeping all day, on top of 10-12 hours during the night. No cough. No wheezing. Just this.
It started this summer, but honestly was hard to tell that it wasn't recovering from an exhausting semester and/or regular depression. But this past semester things seemed different. Harder. More days than not I came straight home from teaching, meetings, the day, and barely made it inside before falling asleep on the couch for hours. Going to bed ridiculously early, sleeping 10-12 hours. Weekends, days off, breaks, usually spent doing more of same to varying degrees.
I was grateful I was able to manage it with my job, had the flexibility. And even so had a day I couldn't get out of bed I felt so bad and had to call in sick. More days than not taking 800mg of ibruprofren for headeache, pain. I focused on just getting through day, week, semester, to the next break. Most days I was fine for the time I had to teach. Some days I was amusing on my roll-ey chair around the classroom playing bumper cars as I went around helping students and answering questions.
Except for work, I don't go anywhere, grocery shop just once a week, mask, and try to not do it during busy times. I'm fully boosted. I'm lucky that classroom ceilings are pretty high, ventilation good if you keep the doors open, has a filter, and CO2 monitor generally shows it in the 700-800 range. I think especially this semester, I just figured that this was what life was with the whole world deciding Covid didn't exist. I was grateful I lived in a place with low numbers, with a job that allows me flexibility to be able to nap and recover in afternoons, that I had a choice to avoid crowds, not having to deal with busy offices, crowded elevators or public transportation. I make sure to buy new masks, rotate, either put in for the free Covid tests or buy my own. Mine have all been negative, but I worry about how accurate the Rapid Tests are, although they seem to work for others.
I fear Long Covid, not just because I know people with it but because I am on my own, and if I were to be disabled, or not be able to work for a long period, there is no one to help, take care of me, no safety net. It's a fairly short downward slide into not being able to pay bills, mortgage, and being homeless.
The other context for all this is where I am. It's months to get a doctor's appointment. I felt bad enough part way through the semester to get an emergency appointment, but I had to fight for it. The phone nurse wanted me to go sit at urgent care for hours. When I finally got to the doctor the next day they fought with me about giving me a PCR test. Like several nurses and a doctor argued with me. I ended up being sent home after being told PCR and Strep were both negative, but to take medicine like it was Strep. There is no good access to tests, doctors, treatments, even four years after the start of the pandemic. Hell, most of the medical personel I've had to deal with the last four years don't even believe Covid is real, don't mask, don't get vaccinated. Part of the reason I've focused on rest, avoiding things, doing what I can is I figured that it was better than sitting for hours in Urgent Care, around non-masked folks, dealing with medical staff who don't believe in Covid.
Honestly, the years since I've moved here have not been great healthwise. I fell in the shower hurting myself and when I went to the doctor it was a couple months to a specialist appointment who scheduled an MRI which was another couple months away. Only to be told they didn't see anything, but go to physical therapy. Which helped some. But the expensive co-pays for the specialist, the thousands for MRI, the weekly expense of physical therapy, it all added up and took forever to pay off. Then seemingly as soon as I did I started having ankle issues. Repeat the process but add x-rays. This time there was an answer- torn ligaments from years ago, but the answer was also not bad enough to do anything, so be careful, wear a brace. The last few years I've also had more issues with my hands, stiff, hurt after doing things with them, loss of fine motor skills. Bad enough that I gave away my guitar and my bike. Part of this week has been soreness, pain in my right hand, stiffness in both, and a bit of a burning in the left. I worry about this getting worse. I am a teacher, a writer, a scholar. And as I type this I FEEL my joints.
But this morning I woke up and a different thought occurred to me. A different context.
I am 47. In a couple of months I'll be 48.
And my mom first started getting sick when she was 46. The first time I remember being aware that she was sick was my college undergraduate graduation in May 1998. Mom had ot leave early because she was tired. I moved to Atlanta then New York City after graduation so I was home for winter break sometimes, but not much else so I was not home to see what the next six years looked like although I talked to her every day on the phone. By 2004 I moved home to help and experienced first hand what Mom's day to day was.
Mom died by suicide in 2011 on Valentine's Day. She overdosed on her Oxycotin prescription. In hindsight a pain management doctor giving someone with life long addiction problems probably should not have been given 40mg pills plus break through medicine. But there was never a diagnosis for what she had. Living at least an hour away from doctors and specialists and hospitals meant that she waited months for appointments then often did not feel well enough to make the appointment. Some said it was Lupus. Another MS but she had no lesions. Parkinson's but no definitive evidence. Her mental status deteriorated along with sleeping all the time, muscle soreness, but when she had to have neck surgery and her meds were regulated there was an amazing couple of weeks where my mom was back. So it's hard to know what the mental stuff actually was. At the end she hated me for lots of reasons. She fell asleeep everywhere, and was angry when you woke her up. Sometimes it was worth the fight, sometimes not. In fact that's how she died. She was on the floor face into the couch and was not woken up. Hours later when someone went to wake her up she was dead. Nothing EMS or anyone could do. Was the OD instantaneous? Would waking her up have saved her? Don't know. I've gone over the autopsy report hundreds of times and there are no answers.
Mom's illness was a daily thing, but her death came as a shock. Despite all that was wrong, how miserable she was, all of her symptoms were being treated. So while she hated her life, and me, a lot, there was never any indication, not from a single doctor, that she just wouldn't live like this for a really, really, long time. Maybe that's why it was often more aggravating than tragic. Exhausting than sad. I know that twelve years later I've banged my head again that wall with absolutely no help. Hindsight is 20/20 and I wish I'd done better. I wish she wasn't so miserable. I wish I'd done more. I hate she died hating me. But I've come to realize that wanting doesn't do anything and at some point you just have to set some things down and keep going.
But this morning as my hand shook as I carried my coffee cup, spilling a trail from kitchen to living room, I thought of my mom's shaking hands. I thought of her when everything started, and she said the blanket I made her had magical powers and/or she'd been bitten by a tsetse fly and had sleeping sickness. That she just couldn't stay awake. And I worried that we never found out what she actually had. That her closed adoption in New Mexico meant no medical records.
I think, it does not matter. I think that with the state of the world, and the total collapse of healthcare, and the multiple apocalypses going on, that it really just doesn't matter. But I can't stop thinking about the fact that I'm more than a year older than her when she started showing signs of what ultimately was the end. She was 58 when she died, so I have some time until I reach the milestone of older than Mom ever was. But it's closer than it was. And I've already aged past one health milestone of hers. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Here's what I know. I have a home, two miraculous kittehs, a job. I am grateful for all this which is so much more than so many. I am grateful I have as much control over my day to day life as I do. I try to appreciate the life I have, the small jobs of unicorn pens and soft kittehs and beautiful sunrises. I'm going to try and rest, and take care of myself. The rest sort of all seems too big, too much, and so I'll keep doing what I can and let that be enough.
