Tonight ends my 10-day quarantine since my first (and only) COVID19 symptom, the loss of taste and smell, which lasted five days. In every other way, I felt perfectly healthy. I didn't have a fever or a cough. I wasn't tired or achy. I didn't have a headache or sore throat. I had none of the typical symptoms of this awful disease.
Halfway through the week, it occurred to me that I am the reason so many people dismiss this virus as "nothing" or "nothing more than the flu." I am the reason they downplay its danger and balk at mask mandates and social distancing. For me, it was nothing. The hardest part of the whole thing (other than eating bland food for five days) was staying home all the time when I wasn't even sick!
Clearly, I was one of the lucky ones. I was basically asymptomatic. Others in my family had some symptoms of illness: colds, coughs, body aches, headaches, mild fever, fatigue. But even they can be counted as lucky. No one had any respiratory distress. No one had to be hospitalized. No one died.
That's one of the challenges of this strange virus. Some people (like me) never get sick. Others die. And everything in between. The total unpredictability adds to its mystique. And to its terror.
I know the statistics. While most people infected with COVID aren't asymptomatic like I was, most experience the illness as the rest of my family did, with mild cold or flu-like symptoms. The vast majority recover just fine on their own at home. But not everyone. The elderly and those in other high risk groups often don't fare as well. And sometimes, even young, healthy folks don't. And there's no way to know ahead of time who will suffer severely and who won't.
Therefore, it seems to me we have to do everything we can to protect everyone. We have to remember the "one," even if that "one" represents a statistically small number of the population. My 82-year-old mother, for example, matters. Her life matters as much as anyone else's. The best science has for us at this point is to protect ourselves and others by wearing a mask and social distancing in public places. Even with a vaccine on the horizon, it won't offer herd immunity quickly enough for us to let our guard down. We have to remain diligent. United we can control this; divided we cannot.
As we come to the end of our quarantine and COVID experience as a family, I am profoundly grateful for our health and that no one suffered any severe symptoms. Every night when I went to bed, I wondered, "Will this be the night I wake up struggling to breathe?" It was so scary. How much of this was rational fear and how much was anxiety I'll never know. I'm just thankful it's over.
Here's a picture of Gerald and me on Christmas, a week before any of this began. Gerald has spent the past 10 days asleep. Pretty much all the time. I keep wondering how we would have functioned had I been sick too. Who would have picked up groceries, cooked food, taken care of the dogs, reminded people to check their oxygen levels? So glad we didn't have to find out.
Stay well, everyone! Wear your masks properly. Stay distanced from others out in public. Please!
No comments:
Post a Comment