Everything is so surreal. This can’t be real life? If I don’t force myself to be numb I don’t think I will make it through the next few…weeks? Months? Dear God—-YEARS?

The Mad King Presidency has ruined me. The anxiety and depression is never-ending. And to watch the latest political developments unfold nightmarishly every day coupled with a worldwide health pandemic, it’s almost too much to bear.

Yet here we all are.

Here I am at 1:45 am blogging. I have internet, despite the windy thunderstorm happening outside. (The satellite internet is down, but my phone hotspot is working.) I have my dogs at my feet, my cats are in boxes sleeping, HWMMS snoring in the next room.

I’ve been out of the public “social isolating” or “self-quarantining” or distant-coughing or whatever the hell the term is since Saturday, March 7th*.

I came home from work the day before and went straight to bed sick, breathless and coughing. I woke up with a fever of 102. I slept through the weekend with all the symptoms of COVID-19 and I called my doctor on Monday. My doctor called back and had me come in first thing Tuesday morning.

No tests. Just keep resting. Take Nyquil, Mucinex. Monitor the fever. And take amoxicillin. But it’s probably viral. Use the nebulizer. That was the last time I left the house and it was for an hour. Tuesday, March 10th. I pretty much slept the entire week. Fever turned to low-grade and breathing wasn’t bad and I thought for one day I was finally feeling better but nope, all I ended up doing was sleeping. Getting up and walking around, sitting up to do work. Nope. Exhaustion and shortness of breath. I’ve had 7 PTO days burned up with this illness…and I usually can get in a few hours of working from home when I have my usual chronic bronchitis. Nope. Not this time. Monday I had enough and I knew I needed to call the doctor again.

Also I called the doctor again because I heard that I would now be eligible for a COVID19 test, I didn’t need to meet that travel outside of the area part of the equation. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA. Nope. I was still registering a low-grade fever and cough wasn’t going away. Monitor symptoms. I was doing the best I could and in fact by self-isolating even better than most patients (good job me!—-also VERY LUCKY TO HAVE UNDERSTANDING WORK ENVIRONMENT AND PAID TIME OFF AVAILABLE)

Wednesday and Thursday I felt much better. No recorded temperature over 99ish. I’m able to NOT sleep the entire day away, although I’ve fallen into the stay up late night fall asleep around 5-6ish and sleep in until noon schedule. I won’t complain too much because of course my body is confused after sleeping most of the week prior. And this week started Work From Home shutdown until (at least) April 20th, so I can work whatever hours I’m awake. But grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Last night I was up all night trying to trace back where I could have picked up the virus. I was at a brunch, but no one from the brunch is sick. I was at an event at the Community Foundation—-and found out a friend who works there who I saw ended up sick a few days later. But that was the night before I was sick, incubation isn’t that fast? And I was having breathing problems all week. Oh crap, I went to lunch with my friend who works at Roswell Park, where two cases of COVID19 are known. But she wasn’t sick and still isn’t sick. I don’t really see that many other people day to day? And how did HWMMS not get really sick? He was under the weather Sunday—-called into work on Monday because he was tired and he slept all day and said he had a fever that broke and then was ok and went to work on Tuesday. He coughs a little, but he usually does, tis the season. And maybe I got it worse because I have chronic bronchitis and asthma and diabetes and my immune system is bad. Or maybe it is just because of my breathing problems and not viral and that is why he didn’t get it, because we ALWAYS share our viruses. Last time was at Christmas, he got it from work and gave it to me. And no one at his work is coughing or sick now—-and no one at my work is sick and I saw them on Friday, oh wait, someone at work IS sick now and has a fever (13 days later) but she said she usually gets sick this time of year too. And and and…yeah, wonder why I didn’t sleep.

And once I do fall asleep and my brain stops thinking———I don’t want to get up and face reality.

It’s hard to send invoices to our tenants (friends) small businesses knowing we are all hurting. How can I pretend that everything is the same and work in spreadsheets and pay bills (for now) and plan future events that can’t be planned because everything is postponed. Sigh. I can’t. So I scroll through the news because NOTHING ELSE MATTERS RIGHT NOW.

And when I read the news and realize how fucked up everything is and see that my niece’s High School has a confirmed case of COVID19 and my brother has medical rounds at one of the places where someone is a confirmed case of COVID19 (in the same day) and they are not “high-risk” and I am not high-risk (EVEN THOUGH I AM) and we should all just voluntarily self-isolate as much as we can and monitor which is the directive of our government officials and health professionals-—————– I don’t want to wake up. I’d rather sleep all day, forever.

Here I am, living my normal (but not feeling well) life at Weber Wonderland, completely content, safe, fed, entertained…and the world is falling apart around me. It’s a hard juxtaposition to sort out in my brain (and heart and soul.) There’s no place I’d rather be than Weber Wonderland. I’m privileged for certain and guilty as fuck about it. I like and trust my doctor, very much. I like and trust our County Executive. I’ve never been a fan of our Governor, but in a crisis HOT DAMN there’s no one better to lead. I can’t imagine a more understanding, supportive and flexible work environment. I’m very, very, very lucky and privileged.

Oh no, INTERRUPT THAT THOUGHT FOR new thoughts! What if what I have ISN’T COVID19? Even though it didn’t feel like my normal chronic bronchitis or flu? The exhaustion and days of fever reminded me very much like my case of the swine flu years ago—-except that flu was vomiting and diarrhea and so many aches and pains along with fever and exhaustion. THIS RANDOM MARCH VIRUS I HAVE was very hard on my breathing and days of a fever and exhaustion, but I still had my appetite and was able to drink and no real pain, headache, body ache etc….just the chills and fever. And it’s only been a year after being diagnosed with asthma….so maybe that makes it worse. I DON’T KNOW?! Can I still get COVID19 if I don’t have it? Will it be worse? Should I worry? My bestie who I saw at the brunch 18 days ago isn’t feeling well, is she sick? Did I get her sick? 18 days is too long, right?

Right?

Sigh…

All these random thoughts spewing from my fingers to the screen right now aren’t new. I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged most of this already along the way. For some reason, right now…I needed to get these words out.  I’m not feeling anxious or rage. I’m feeling numb. I hate numb. But numb is taving my life right now.

I had a glimpse of hope when the calendar flipped to 2020. I can’t betlieve how much worse everything has become. It’s only March. A month ago, none of this was real life.

And here we are. Surreal.

*I wrote in my blog on MARCH 7th – HOW ARE THERE NO TESTS? Here I am on MARCH 20th saying – HOW ARE THERE NO TESTS?

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