Yesterday I tested positive for C-19. It was an at-home rapid test that required scraping my own nostrils with a swab, mixing the result with some magic sauce, and waiting 15 minutes for the result. Where did the virus come from? The friends I’ve seen in the last two months are all vaxxed and boostered; so am I and the girlfriend. But I guess these man-made impediments don’t bother the Omicron variant, a wily little devil who sneaks past anything in his way. I’m not going to make this personal—Omicron bears no grudges—but I’m not going to write as if he didn’t happen to me, to my very own body.
I’ve been riding the subway and shopping at Whole Foods on 125th for a year, always masked and distanced, except when I wasn’t—when the subway car or the express lines got crowded. These spaces were my first choice as proximate cause of my infection, but everybody in Whole Foods has been masked for two years (the junkies who pace the sidewalk outside are similarly equipped), and most people on the subway have been, too (I’d say 80% until early January). So who knows?
I’m a walking contagion now, in any event, unwelcome everywhere. I was supposed to meet up with old friends on Wednesday, but that’s now out of the question—unless I test negative by then. Not much chance of that, and who would believe me, anyway?
So let me tell you about the symptoms on Day 2. My oxygen level reads between 95 and 99, my temperature changes according to what I’m drinking, coffee or fake beer, (99.5 to 95.8), my breathing is regular and painless. I feel feverish, though, which means that time slows down and every movement of a body part becomes an effort to be coached, thus a mini-spectacle because you're watching your self do what came naturally yesterday. You get the chills, you’re actually shivering, but as soon as you put on another layer you start to sweat, so you soak the clothes, throw them on the bathroom floor, and look for any garment with long sleeves. Meanwhile your skin becomes porous, as every touch penetrates it, hot and cold become unendurable extremes, and your potato head feels too heavy to be borne aloft and upright by the rest of you. It's an out of body experience, as if Freud's tripartite mental apparatus—id, ego, super ego—let you in on their conference call, so you could report back to them on your symptoms later today.
My report is in the making. I’ll let you know how the presentation goes.
Thanks, Tim, hanging in there.
Hope you feel better quickly! xo