I have been sick, and I am still sick. The level of sick I have been: I have not been at my computer; I did not for many days feel up to having my laptop up in bed with me either; I lost my Wordle and Waffle streaks. At one point I wanted ginger ale, and I needed to text Paul to bring some to me, but my phone was on my bedside table and I would have to reach my arm out from under the covers to get it; it took me over ten minutes to achieve that. I got into the shower one morning, and I could not finish the shower: I had to just sort of wrap it up halfway and get out and dry off, and then I had to put my towel on the bed and lie down for awhile before I could get dressed. There is a particular category of illness where one lies in bed, not even bored, just sort of lying there doing nothing hour after hour, and this was that category of illness. After a couple of days, I was able to start reading People magazines. Now I am up to Light Novels.
My main symptoms were fever, cough, runny nose (at first a ton of sneezing, then just running/stuffy), congestion, exhaustion, loss of senses of taste/smell, plus body aches and chills and so forth but I file those under fever. I went to urgent care not for those symptoms, but when the pain and pressure in one ear became worrisome. The doctor was distracted by the ear (he diagnosed an ear canal infection, which led to an Unpleasant Procedure ((A WICK!! A WICK IN MY EAR!!)) and then seven days of ear drops), but said that even with the suspicious taste/smell-loss symptoms, he did not think it was Covid, he thought it was flu. (It had been too many days since symptom-onset for it to be worthwhile to do a flu test.) He said my symptoms lined up with a type of flu that was currently rampant in our area.
I had to go back two days later to have the ear re-evaluated. I saw a different doctor, who confirmed the first doctor’s assessment of the ear, and reassured me that yes, it would still be hurting badly enough to wake me up in the night, even with the wick and two days of antibiotic drops. He also asked about my other symptoms, and not only agreed with the doctor that it was likely flu, he narrowed it down and said he thought it was novel influenza A. In case you are someone who likes to know the virus. He said it’s everywhere in our area, and that it seems to be lasting “a good two weeks” for most people. I am not sure whether to count from the very first symptoms (a feeling of “maybe coming down with a cold” on Christmas Eve) or from the first serious symptoms (feeling very bad on Christmas Day evening, happily after all the important Christmassing was done), but either way I may be within sight of the end of this.
I still can’t smell or taste things, which still seems suspicious to me; I have taken four covid rapid tests, all negative, but I worry they are not sufficiently effective at diagnosing newer strains. I sprayed some foaming bleach spray into the toilet bowl and onto the shower curtain (I am not up to cleaning, but I can do some quick killing), and I could not smell it at all. I lit some matches and blew them out: I could not smell them. I cannot smell Vicks VapoRub!! And I can’t hear out of the ear that is infected, except I can hear my own pulse. My whole head feels wrong. I feel semi-disconnected from reality.
I have missed two weeks of work; I don’t know the last time I was sick enough to miss two weeks of work. Never? I did get flu once before, but it was when I had small children, so there was no taking time off. I remember putting out a bunch of sippee cups of milk and a box of dry cereal, putting the TV on some kids’ channel, and then curling up in a recliner and trying to stay alive.
The last time I got flu, I was vaccinated at my doctor’s office. I asked the nurse how painful the shot was that year, because it seems to vary from year to year. She said not to worry: she had a particular technique that surprised people with how painless it was. She told me that people say to her, “Wow, shots usually hurt, but not when you do it! My arm wasn’t even sore afterward!” I watched as she gave me the shot, then pulled the needle out with a flair; the vaccine liquid made a watery arc through the air. Her shots didn’t hurt because the fluid was not going into the muscle. I did not say anything. I got the flu. I wonder how many of her other patients also got the flu. I wonder if she is still giving completely ineffective shots and feeling proud of her technique. I hope at some point they gave her a student trainee, and the student trainee said, “But…the shot went into the air.”
This year I wonder if it was because I got the flu shot at the same time as the covid shot. They said it was okay to do that, but I don’t trust them not to say something is okay if it’s less than ideal but they think more people will get the shots that way; I might make that same call, if I were them. But also, I know the flu shot doesn’t cover all the strains, it just covers the predicted strains; I also know that even if you get the right shot for the right strains, your particular body might fail to take up the sword. Edward got both chicken pox vaccinations, but when doctors did a blood test before starting the Remicade, it showed no immunity to chicken pox.
So who knows why, but our whole household got sick. Our timing was very lucky: Paul was sick BEFORE Christmas, but was better by the day; the rest of us didn’t feel really bad until AFTER Christmas; so Christmas was not ruined, and also there has always been an adult who feels well enough to go to the grocery store and/or pharmacy. Three of the six of us have had ear complications requiring antibiotics (two of us got drops, one of us got pills), which I think is interesting. One of us had sinus complications that might have become serious, but they used a sinus rinse (Target link, Amazon link) and did steam treatments (leaning over a bowl of just-boiled water with a towel tent over the head), and those seemed to beat it into submission.
One reason I am telling you about this recent/ongoing illness is because misery loves company: now that I’m well enough to use a computer, I’d love to hear about it if you’ve been sick too. Your symptoms! Did you stay in bed for some of it? DID IT GET YOUR EAR?? The other reason I’m telling you is that I’ve noticed that ever since the pandemic, people seem to be more secretive about being sick. I remember people used to complain all over social media about it! But now it’s as if it’s something shameful: if you are sick, it’s maybe that you weren’t being careful; maybe you were socializing irresponsibly; also, maybe you got other people sick. A feeling of blame. But there sure is a lot less of that once someone starts the ball rolling! I said on Facebook that we’d all been sick, and a BUNCH of people commented that they’d been sick too, and my impression is that they were commenting with RELIEF: it’s not just us! other people are sick too!
