Like There's No Tomorrow

This is an inherently terrifying article for me to write. When I came down sick almost two weeks ago, all the symptoms paraded across my mind with the current thing on everyone's minds: Coronavirus.

I learned a lot about coronaviruses. A whole family of respiratory infections including the common cold. This one is insidious. Slower. More complicated. More tenacious. So when I first caught whatever I have, I thought it was a cold, or maybe just the same seasonal allergies I get every year. So I took my allergy meds. Went to sleep. Got a fever but I assumed that was just the sinus infection I get every time I don't catch my allergies fast enough in a given year. Saw my doctor, got antibiotics for my sinus infection. Got a sore throat, but that was just the postnasal drip from the sinuses. Right?

Right?

But as the new symptoms kept cropping up, when the sinus infection went away but everything else... continued... And here, I live in Las Vegas, where Casinos are king and serve passengers directly from the airport, where anyone who works on the floor, goes home. Maybe spreads it to their family. Family I'll almost certainly walk past or stand in line with, at the store, at a fast food place, in the post office. There's no way to effectively police all that; you can't stop people from living their lives without locking them down, and this should have been locked down a long time ago. We all fell victim to complacency.

Now, I sit here at my desk, typing on my still relatively new keyboard, committing to file thoughts and words like I haven't written since I got sick. Fuelled by panic instead of by inspiration. Feeling a little like my lungs are tight, like when I had asthma as a child, asthma I outgrew. I don't know how much of my flushed, warm skin is anxiety and how much is me actually, legitimately being sick. I've been isolating myself since the beginning on the off chance that I had the flu but the measures for flu and coronavirus are pretty much the same- stay clean, clean everything you touch, rest, keep hydrated, and don't get in contact with anyone you absolutely don't have to.

My wife is worried, though she barely says anything, but I can see it in her almost compulsion to try and make sure I have anything I need, make sure I'm resting, make sure I'm ready to go to the doctor at a moment's notice. I don't want to be a hypochondriac but at what point does it become stupid stubbornness? If I'm not dangerously sick, what if I pull away resources from someone whose life is in jeopardy? I've partially lost hearing in one year because the eustachian tube is clogged and again, I ask myself, am I being stupid, noble, or reckless? If I go permanently partially deaf, is it worth it? No, reverse that. If in six months, I can hear but someone who needed my hospital bed died while I'm in it, was my full hearing worth that?

Of course it's not. And deep down, that's why I haven't gone in at all. It's stupid, from my wife's perspective, and I know she wouldn't understand that I'd rather be diminished, than whole at the expense of someone else's health or life. So I lie by omission. I pretend everything's okay, it's just that nagging cough at the end. And I keep wondering how stupid I'm actually being, and hoping that if I AM diminished, permanently impacted in my hearing, in my breathing, that in ten years I'll still feel the same.

Assuming, that is, I don't have to go in tomorrow because of ARDS. If I do, maybe I'll remember to tell someone about the hearing.

All I know is I haven't been able to enjoy music in almost a week, since the ear clog happened. Maybe they'll have something nice playing in the hospital when I wake up.