On taking a more active part in the Pandemic

By Bobby Neal Winters

Last Saturday morning at 5AM, I awoke to the sounds of my better half throwing up.  Only someone who had been married to this particular woman would’ve recognized it for what it was.  It sounded like tablespoons of gravel being thrown into the toilet.  When I throw up, it sounds like a tyrannosaurus rex is trying to mate with an electrical transformer.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me,” came the reply.

By 9AM our daughters had convinced her to take the COVID test.

POSITIVE.

She moved into a spare bedroom to try to save me, but it was to no avail.

I was okay on Sunday.  I woke up fine on Monday.  I took my walk before it got hot. I stopped and talked to people while maintaining social distance. But before I had finished my two-mile round, I noticed a tickling in my bronchial tubes.

I returned home.  Ate my breakfast.  Took a COVID test.

POSITIVE.

Well, I am healthy, I say to myself.  I’ve been inoculated and I was boosted only seven months ago.  I will be fine.

No.

I have a superpower when it comes to detecting whether I have a virus.  It is my spine.  Whenever I have a virus or am vaccinated against one, I have aches between every single vertebrae in my spine.

That started coming on in the afternoon.  It was unmistakable from the very beginning and it increased throughout the day.

Monday night was bad.

Not only every vertebrae of my spine, but every joint in my body, every part of my body that had ever encountered anything harder than a blade of grass, ached.

I was wracked with chills even though we were in the middle of a heat-wave.

Then, in the dead of the night, our cat Mischief came and put her nose against mine.

She was checking whether or not I was still breathing.  She wanted to know if I was dead or not.  I very consciously, with whatever life was still in me, exhaled into her nostrils.  I wanted her to know that I was alive so that she wouldn’t begin to feed on the soft parts of my body.

I knew I couldn’t fight her off.

That same night, she had performed the same proof-of-life test with my wife.

Mischief must’ve been hungry.

Monday night was the worst night.  

Things got rapidly better after that.  

We had been given the advice from a family friend to get paxlovid, which is an antiviral.  I’d tried to do this on Saturday, but you need a prescription.  Well, we got prescriptions on Monday.  After the night of hell, we turned the corner.  It’s been a week and we don’t feel any worse than is consistent with six decades of life.

I would like to give the credit to paxlovid, but scientifically I can’t.  I am pretty sure it was part of it, but we are both quite healthy to begin with; we’ve both been inoculated and boosted (probably should’ve gotten that second booster).

So our quick bounce back was probably from a combination of things.  

But I am going to give at least some credit to paxlovid.

That having been said, let it be known that paxlovid imparts a characteristic taste to your mouth.  I cannot describe it accurately using vocabulary consistent with the standards of a family newspaper, but you get the idea.

Nothing is free in this world but the grace of God.

So for us COVID was like a bad case of the flu.  We will still be getting vaccinated as recommended.  We will still wear the masks when needed.

Getting out of bed is a privilege; health is a privilege; life is a privilege.

AMEN.

And, Mischief, I’ve got an eye on you.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )