Disease du jour

 

If it ain't covid, it's something else

Last week I felt the tiniest scratch of an imminent sore throat, a few unfamiliar aches, a bit of leakage around the nostrils. I thought, here we go.

My wife had caught Covid for a second time not even three weeks earlier, and pretty much everybody else I know has had it at least once. I’d made it three and a half years without testing positive. It was a good run, but I knew it was just a matter of time. 

We still had a couple of tests lying around. Being a responsible adult, I took one. Waited the required time. Negative. 

Well, people often test negative before the disease fully takes hold. I waited a couple more  days, until I was dry-coughing and blowing my nose every three seconds, and even a small bite of oatmeal felt like a big bite of sandpaper. I also had a fair amount of pain elsewhere, as though  I’d been dropped from a great height onto a field of farm implements. 

The next day I was slightly better. I thought, OK Covid, that all you got? I grabbed our last test and blearily struggled through the now-familiar drill. The second test was negative too. 

WTF? I was almost disappointed. Because if this wasn’t Covid, it was something else. Something obviously contagious and pretty damned virulent in its own right. There are a lot of diseases floating around this time of year: flu, RSV, shingles, the common freaking cold. Probably polio and smallpox too, eventually, if guys like Ron DeSantis (the noted epidemiologist from Florida) ever get more power. 

A couple more days passed. We got more tests in the mail. I took a third one yesterday. Fifteen minutes later: Just that single solid line indicating that whatever I’d gone through, it wasn’t Covid 19. Now I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with that information.

Today I’m much better. Not 100 percent, but maybe 80. I’m glad my streak is still alive, glad that I am too. But it was a humbling experience. I hadn’t been that sick in many years and had kind of forgotten what it’s like. 

Moral of the story: Well, there is no moral. Except maybe that face masks and a modicum of social distancing might not be as outdated as we’d like to think. And evading Covid doesn’t mean you’ll evade everything else. Be careful out there.