#MyCOVIDStory — we didn’t know but he did.
time feels so different now than it did then. looser, more arbitrary, less stringent. but back then it mattered. so i’ll tell you this story as closely as i can to the way it used to go.
march eleventh: the official word was that rona wasn’t a threat, but cardi had warned us all already. one of my kids had started replacing handshakes with “foot daps.” i leaned on a counter in the 8th ward joking with friends about how fucked we all were and how america stays being late on everything. we lost our shit when we saw the apple news notification about tom and rita hanks. one of us works in film and had been on set with one of their sons. there were a variety of reactions in the friend group, and i can only speak for myself. i couldn’t stop laughing. i knew already i was going to get this shit. my intuition is rarely wrong, plus i have chronic illnesses, risk factors, and a medical history a plenty. i also know how viruses work. it wasn’t that i wasn’t taking it seriously, but i was already joking about how i felt good about getting secondhand celebrity rona. status update: child hanks doesn’t have rona. we’re “safe.”
march twelfth: i work in a high school. i love it, but it’s demanding. i am also seven months into an official diagnosis of a chronic illness. you can believe me when i say, i’m used to not feeling well at work. i generally know i’ve overshot it when more than one coworker asks if i’m okay and says i don’t look good. this was one of those days. i sat down next to another woman on staff and she asked if i thought this virus thing was going to hit here. i told her i thought we’d look back and realize it already had. i stocked up on groceries that would last and require little effort in case i had a flare or caught this thing.
march thirteenth: if it hadn’t have been a friday, i would have taken off. i didn’t feel good. i hoped it would get better as the day went on, but it didn’t. i went down to the school clinic around noon to get a flu test. it came back negative. i felt comforted and went back about my business. a kid’s mom prank called her to say she had COVID. the kid believed her and burst into tears. the same staff member i’d sat with the day before and i comforted her. as an administration we were furious. the kid’s mom picked her up right before everyone’s phones began to blow up and we all found out we weren’t coming back to the school building until… who knows?
march fourteenth: the nurse practitioner in the school clinic had mentioned i was eligible to get the COVID test because i had recently been out of the country. i didn’t want to take up a test (they were saying they were hard to get). a friend convinced me it wasn’t being dramatic to go get tested and that it’d be better to know and clear my anxiety. i headed to the urgent care and got stabbed in the nose. i didn’t feel good. i slept. a lot. this whole thing still felt surreal.
march fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth: a fever dream. but actually. i fought to stay awake and work from home. i read an article about a woman my age who died from COVID. a knot formed in my stomach, or maybe it was a symptom from the meds.
march seventeenth: i’ve started to feel a little better. the pop rocks sensation in my sinuses has abated and i can keep my eyes open for longer than an hour at a time. i think maybe my body is just catching up on sleep and rest. lord knows i haven’t relaxed in a while. i’m scrambling via text and email to organize everything kids will need to log-in to their virtual classes into one document. i get a call shortly after 1pm telling me i’ve tested positive and they’ll contact me to check in and monitor my progress. i call my principal. he thinks i’m joking, then sounds worried. i go back to sleep.
evening of march seventeenth (and the next night, and the one after that): the shock has definitely not worn off yet. last week, i was helping kids research ACT score requirements for their top choice colleges. now, i’m trying to figure out which hospital would be best, just incase — triangulating proximity to my house, my insurance (thank god for my insurance), and number of ventilators available. number of ventilators. surreal. i don’t actually think i’ll end up on a vent, that’s not what i’m worried about most. i can’t afford an ambulance ride, but i’d figure that out later. it’s just… i haven’t stopped coughing for how many days straight at this point and i know my chest hurts from the muscles being tired from coughing, but… what if it’s not just that? how do you know when to go in? i’ve been reading everything i can find and several people describe suddenly gasping for breath. i live alone. i’m too scared to sleep.
it was a little less than two weeks before the first person i knew died from COVID-19. it was a little less than three weeks before the first person i loved died from COVID-19. they died without their families. when i called my mother sobbing she reminded me that it was very likely there was a nurse with them, so they didn’t die alone. i cried harder thinking of those nurses. how many people did they watch die?
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October had barely started when Donald J. Trump, with all the resources and knowledge available within the United States and every opportunity to protect himself, admitted he had contracted COVID-19 and exposed countless people. A helicopter picked him up from his front yard. He was finally wearing a mask. He had the finest medical attention available to him in the world in a six-room suite, despite having paid only $750 in taxes since being president. His wife, also sick, neglected to join him, but received medical care in the comfort of her home. He received an experimental coronavirus antibody treatment and talked about it so brazenly that it may interfere with the process of it being safely vetted for the rest of us.
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We didn’t know, but he did. That’s a crime.
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