Transmissions from Season 4 of Covid-19

Four times!

Sixteen days later and the soreness in my throat persists. My disgusting, abhorrent, primal morning ritual of cleansing my congested vessel via violent farmer blows reveals blood and unspeakable yellow-ish chunks. Tiny continents of infection mingling with valiantly dead white blood cells. Down the drain as quickly as possible.

Sorry you had to see that.

It’s my fourth time getting Covid. And let me tell anyone who’s curious: Season 4 is absolutely skippable. Zero stars. Would not do it again.

I’ve been a cooperative soldier as far as vaccines go. My workplace brought in some nice folks to give free flu and Covid shots recently and I opted out of the most recent Covid booster, only because—every time I’ve gotten the vaccine/booster—I get sick for a few days anyway. I thought it would be inconvenient, get in the way of some personal things I wanted/needed to do. “If I get Covid, it’ll probably only last a couple days anyway,” I reasoned.

”Little did he know,” intones the narrator.

Fast forward to me spending a good 8-9 days in bed, alternately shivering complete with chattering teeth and sweating through multiple changes of shirts and sheets in the wee hours of the night. Migraines. Enveloping exhaustion. Coughing fits that felt endless, like the cough itself was a demon possessing me, taking over everything for however long it pleased. And, when the coughs finally ended, they often did so with an exclamation mark of vomit. Coughing til I threw up. Usually it was a dry heave. Sometimes it had some grape or orange juice to it.

Sorry you had to see that.

When I was a kid and threw up, I often cried, such was the feeling of utter helplessness, the feeling of being cruelly out of control of my own body and bodily functions, the minor terror of grotesque unpredictability. Nowadays, I tend to cuss my way through it, using curse words in a way not dissimilar (but, obviously, far less traumatic and difficult and monumental and painful) to a pregnant woman using breaths with each contraction. But with swears.

There wasn’t much in there. I wasn’t eating much. Between the coughs and sickness and inability to taste things, my appetite took the week off. I dropped about 9 pounds in a week. Interested in some quick-acting weight loss? Call now for your free consultation! Operators are standing by! PaulsCovidWeightLoss.biz.

The terrible week was compounded by the fact that Holly (and two of our kids) also got sick. Quite sick too. So sick, in fact, that for a few days we had to kind of informally sort out who was Sickest and Second Sickest. Being anointed Sickest is certainly no gold medal, but Second Sickest is, by default, automatically left with all the survival tasks—getting kids fed, carpooled, put to bed, off the Xbox, etc. Somebody’s gotta do it. The two of us passed Sickest and Second Sickest back and forth throughout the week. It’s definitely what we envisioned when we said “I do” way back in the mid-00s.

In sickness and in health.

I found myself hopped up—like a clearly injured athlete pumped full of cortisone and steroids and adrenaline—on DayQuil, focusing all my energy on not having one of those unstoppable coughing fits while on the freeway. I want to tell you that I invented some ingenious way to make my kids lunches without getting my sick germs all over. Like a vacuum-sealed airlock and a series of disinfectants and all that. I want to tell you that. So badly. And I cannot. I made their lunches as carefully as my sick self could and hoped for the best. Nobody’s perfect. More than once, I found myself washing the leaning towers of dirty dishes with a mask on, trusting that the dishwasher would disinfect, if I could just keep from coughing all over the place.

Heroic? Hardly. Anyone who’s ever been Second Sickest would do the same, I’m sure.

Which is to say nothing of the haze of hours upon hours, days upon days I spent passing in and out of consciousness as Sickest. Waking here and there to cough or drink another glass of Emergen-C or urinate the previous glass out or Slack my coworkers to tell them I’m still sick or text the Weezer tribute band about how we may need to make contingency plans for my role in the show.

Remember, back in Season One, when Covid meant frightening ventilators and we were all watching in-depth videos about the most thorough way to wash your hands and we were thinking in terms of tight family circles and contact chains and toilet paper was being rationed? I’m so glad we’re (mostly) past that and don’t mean to make light of the million-plus who died of Covid-related causes in the U.S. alone. This time around, people asked me where I thought I got it and, honestly, I hadn’t even considered it, not any more than I would’ve thought about where I caught the flu from. Could be anywhere. Which is a far cry from the sort of paranoid, witch-hunting, finger-pointing way we (maybe just I?) tended to look at how coronavirus was spreading in the early days. Back then, like a true zealot, I believed that if I just followed the rules enough, I could judge from my perch of perfection. I don’t have to tell you how that story tends to end.

This time, I’m just happy to be feeling better, if not 100% just yet. For the past week, anytime anyone has asked me how I’m feeling, I’ve been able to truthfully respond, “This is the best I’ve felt in two weeks!” Sometimes punctuated with a cough or two.

I worry a great deal about long-term effects, which of course we’re still learning about. I’ve gone into detail here about my personal experience with memory loss and cognitive decline. Not to mention respiratory issues’ long tail. Like the little elementary school version of me throwing up, the lack of control and unpredictability are perhaps the most unsettling and panic-inducing part in all of it.

Maybe it’ll all be clear in Season 5? (As someone who loyally watched Lost for six seasons, I’m dubious about the writers giving me the answers I want.)