In the wee hours of the morning today, I became yet another statistic, a measurable point within our society. Per the results of my PCR test, I am positive for COVID-19. It’s just another data point really. I’m also a divorced man (statistic), I am a person who strayed from their marriage (statistic), I’ve over 50 with a higher than normal chance for suicide (statistic), I am a child of physical and emotional abuse (statistic). I have a certain blood type, I have brown eyes, etc.…. These statistics, overall are really meaningless to me. They don’t define the man I am, they don’t define my relationships, they don’t keep me from evolving. These statistics are indicators of what was, but not of what is to come. They do not define me. My book is still open and there is a whole lot of goodness out there waiting for me.
As I laid in bed and pondered my fate with COVID, I wondered, am I going to be in a statistic that gets everyone’s attention – will this be fatal? For this one, I find solace in the statistic as I understand in that the chances of this being fatal are very small. Is it this cling to life, the desire to live such a strong driver that we can ignore the other facts? As a person with COVID, so far, I’ve found it to be mostly a drag, I don’t feel very well, I get tired when I walk my dog up my driveway, my O2 level fluctuates between scary @ 95% to fairly normal 98-99%. My heart rate is up and down and all over the place, where I’m normally at 58-60 resting, I’m at 75-80… which is super odd! I’m about midway through this journey, the worst of it has been associated muscle cramping and aches as well as the occasional headache and fever. I am super sneezy too! I just feel puny and run down. At the midpoint, I am hoping this starts to get a little better in the next couple of days.
The upside of this (anyone who knows me knows I have to look for an upside!) is I’ll have 90ish days of immunity moving forward, I’ve had the virus, looked it in the eye and moved along. Hopefully, I’ll be on the waning side of the immunity front when I’m finally able to get my own vaccination. All in all, this is good news as far as I’m concerned. For now, I can be content to have a warm house, warm clothes to wear, good food, the ability to have groceries delivered and still manage to be able to move around to cook. I am a fortunate soul to be sure. The only downside I can see perhaps is the extreme cleaning of my house following this two-week sabbatical, but that would need to be done anyway.
So then, if you’ve read so far, please continue to be well, keep safe, take good care of yourself. Spread kindness and love, be someone’s rock in their time of need, have empathy and love.
As an extra – I’ll leave this here for you to listen to…. https://youtu.be/0y8Q2PATVyI This is my favorite tune for the time being… @2:43 shit gets real… this causes every hair on my body to be on end. I hope it stirs in you the emotion it stirs in me.
Stay salty my friends.