One of my favorite pieces of art of all time is the Raft of the Medusa.
There is alot I love about this painting. But the main thing I want to focus on this time is the emotion. This is what it feels like when every single person in your house is sick at the same time.
Every single person in my house got the rona. Which I suppose should not be a surprise. This fucking disease spreads like wildfire. Lets cover everyone’s experience individually.
My son had one dodgy day of high fever that even the medicine couldn’t bring down. After that, he was pretty much 100%. Which was insane for my wife and I. During the worst of our COVID, he was bouncing up and down off the walls, wanting to play. To be fair to him, he did behave most of the time during the remaining 4 days of his quarantine at home. And for that, I am grateful.
My wife had one day of chills and fever. And then like 2-3 days of “the worst sore throat of my life.” It was at a point where we thought she might have strep in addition to COVID. She described the feeling as swallowing glass. She laid in bed for about 4 days before she finally got around to doing stuff. Congestion hit her after the sore throat faded away, but that has been manageable.
For me, I haven’t had fever with chills like that in a long time. I had 101+ degree fever for about 3 days with drugs only having a limited impact. Constant chills. When I broke the fever, I had a sweat fest one night. A particular kind of sweat that just had this really strong smell attached to it. However, once the fever broke was when my current problems got started. Congestion hit me hard. Expectorant made it all come out, but then, I was the one in the house who got THE side effect. I could no longer taste or smell.
In fact, lets talk about that. I have never had this experience in my life. I first noticed it at dinner. I was starting to feel better, I got a salad to eat. I took a bite of it and it was…nothing. Like I don’t know how to even picture this. Imagine just chewing on something with no flavor but the texture of salad greens. Cant taste any of the earthiness. Cant smell anything. Its just in your mouth and sits there.
I ate 2 bites and that was all I could do. That night was dark. Cause I don’t want to be one of the unlucky ones. I couldn’t help but go to the dark place and wallow in my own shame.
It is now day 6-7, depending on how you are counting, since my wife and I got sick. We are in “recovery” I suppose but its weird to think of it that way.
It feels like it just stretches out with no end. Each day the congestion gets fainter and fainter. Some smells have started to come back to me. I could smell my son’s pop tarts cooking. Where two days ago, I had 3 burners going on the stove full of food and couldn’t smell shit, so that’s progress.
But my wife woke up with the beginnings of what looks like conjunctivitis to me. Acquiring some eye drops for that.
…
My biggest take away from the whole experience is the randomness of it. I never had the sore throat or now pink-eye. She never lost smell or taste, or ran a fever for as long as I did. And my son never had any of it.
Don’t listen to anyone telling you any version of COVID is light. It is most definitely fucking not. I will CONTINUE to be avoiding this disease as much as I can. Cause I never want this shit again.
I just look forward to the day where I can have a glass of whisky, take a big smell of it, and let it carry me away to some other place that isn’t this miserable fucking world.