Well, the good news is, I wasn’t crazy. The bad news is, I had COVID. And, chances are, sooner or later, you will too. Sooner or later, COVID’s gonna get you. Sooner or later, COVID’s gonna win.
At first, I was relieved knowing I couldn’t possibly be so cerebral to imagine I was feeling as sick as I felt. Then, after a few days of a relentless fever and a truly debilitating headache, I became a shell of the woman I was just a week prior. Top that off with Van also testing positive and us needing to make the very sad but practical decision to cancel my 40th birthday celebration, and let’s just say this last week was more miserable than I could have possibly imagined.
But Omicron is a milder variant! This is nothing like the COVID we had before! Five days is plenty of time to recover! With the vaccine and the booster, you’ll be fine!
That, Maury determined, is a lie. The Morgan family was a gross mess even with the vaccine and the booster, five days was definitely not enough time, and mild is how I would describe a cool evening in August, not the effects of a virus that’s killed 850,000 Americans and 5.4 million humans worldwide.
Fortunately, we were never ER or even urgent care sick, but we were most certainly very ill for a lot longer than we expected. Yet, in nearly every exchange I had with someone outside my home I was told, “I hope your symptoms remain mild!” like I was the one who described them as mild in the first place. After this experience, I know for certain I will never again assume someone’s COVID symptoms are mild based solely on their ability to send a text, type an email, or talk on the phone. And you shouldn’t either.
While Rod, a mail carrier, who only brings frustration home with him when he leaves the Post Office, was allowed to take actual sick days to rest and recover with absolutely no expectations he would sort mail from the couch, it was assumed I would continue to do my job from home with the same intensity with which I have always approached my work. This variant is mild, remember? That’s what my employer thought and it’s how I thought I should have felt, too.
Because in all fairness, the expectations put upon me were not just my employer’s; I was most certainly a co-conductor on last week’s expectation train. I was the one answering the phone, responding to emails, and finishing assignments. I was also the one sweating through my clothes on Zoom calls, taking 30-minute power naps between emails, counting down the minutes until I could take more Tylenol, and willing myself not to pass out in the shower. But how would my colleagues know that? Why wouldn’t they assume my symptoms were mild enough to still get shit done when I was the one showing them I could still get shit done?
I wasn’t screaming at them like I had been my Apple Watch every time it pinged with a reminder to stand (in my best Midnight Cowboy impression): “Hey, I’m healin’ here!”
So I did.
On my last hard morning of COVID, after a colleague who had just given me roughly 20 significant edits to a project he could have made himself (yes it was a “he.” Girl, you know it was a “he”), ended our phone call by saying, “I’ll continue to keep you in my prayers!” I broke down in tears and finally composed an email to my colleagues to tell them I was officially taking a sick day. Within 30 minutes of sending that message, my fever was gone, I fell into a glorious nap, and I generated enough strength later in the day to clean our virus-ridden bathrooms. I healed myself through the simple act of expectation management coupled with good rest, Tylenol, and the unconditional love of my family who was also, thankfully, on the mend.
This week, we return to the workplace and to school, and we remain hopeful that another variant doesn’t take advantage of these newly formed antibodies (because we’re going to RAGE). We also look forward to making fewer assumptions about how others may feel while giving ourselves the grace and the space in the future to heal. And you should too.
Title Track: “Sooner or Later,” The Grass Roots. Listen here.
