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Covid Is Never Going To Be Over

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Covid is never going to be over. Never. And I’m tired.

I’m tired of being one of the very few people who remains masked and cautious. Even my doctors don’t. I’m tired of hearing the pandemic talked about in the past tense when, in the past three months alone, six people in my immediate circle have had it. And those are the ones who admit it. Most people pretend they have a cold or allergies. Dollars to donuts, it’s covid. But we’ll never know because no one tests, and tests aren’t available, and when they are available they are expensive, and the rapid tests are shitty anyway, so why bother? I’m tired of hearing people talk about their new mysterious illnesses as though they are completely removed from their covid infections. Raynaud’s disease. Shingles. Heart problems. Inflammatory diseases. A stroke. Brain fog. Memory loss. Accelerating dementia. It’s related to covid. It’s infuriating.

Speaking to a friend today, I said that if she ever sees me in a crowded room without a mask, she will have to know I’m suicidal. It will mean I’ve given up on trying to live. And I have tried really hard to live. In the past ten years, I’ve recovered from a terrible brain injury. All the more reason to protect my brain. I know what’s at stake. I’ve been through my own memory loss and loss of executive function, and I hate to tell you this, but I recognize it in others. I’ve had three open heart surgeries and part of a lung removed. All the more reason to protect my cardio-vascular system. Everything I love to do involves the use of my brain, my heart, and my lungs. Everything. You bet I’m going to protect them. I have lived through so much. And it’s been made exponentially more difficult by also having to protect myself from this monstrous octopus that invades the air we breathe and does everything it can to get its tentacles in every part of our bodies.

Did I mention I’m tired? Early in the pandemic, I realized that covid is doing to the world around us what it does to the world in us. It is a destroyer. What it does to our bodies, it does to our relationships and our society. I can’t be the one to list everything that covid does. Everything it costs. How it moves. Why masks work. The link between covid and fascism. Other people are doing that work. Look for it. Believe it. But I can be the one to reach out from this computer screen and say that too many people are careless with their lives. Careless. I see them. I see them as part of a death cult.

On second thought, maybe it is all the covid deniers who are suicidal. It’s sure not me. I’m not in a death cult. I’m in a life cult. And I’m staying in it. I’ll be here with my masks and my tests and my air filters and my belief that we can do better and whenever anyone wants to join me, they will be welcome. I hope to see you here with me soon.

The Bad Paramedic

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In January 2024, I asked my husband to call 911 because I felt certain I was dying. Beyond something being very wrong with my heart, I felt a sudden and overwhelming sense of doom. I needed to go to the hospital.

I had been diagnosed with a heart problem in the fall of 2023 for which I was supposed to receive open heart surgery in the near future. When the paramedics arrived, I was having trouble concentrating and answering questions. I was busy trying to stay alive. I believe I wasn’t fully conscious. Nevertheless, they persisted with the questions. I remember hoping my husband was answering them. I was in and out. I remember trying to tell them it was my heart, and that I was waiting for surgery but something was really wrong. I remember very large people in my living room. Several. The room felt small and tight.

There seemed to be some debate about whether I would go to the hospital. I panicked. I knew I had to go to the hospital. How could it be up for debate? I sank into myself, tuned out the giants in the living room, and told myself their questions had nothing to do with me. All I had to do was keep breathing. They didn’t seem to understand my heart was a real problem.

I remember they said they couldn’t get the gurney into the house. Could I walk? I remember thinking if I said no, I wouldn’t get taken to the hospital. Somehow I did it. I got to my feet and I walked to the ambulance, eyes closed tight, breathing, holding onto a paramedic for dear life. It was very cold, a rare skiff of snow on the ground. I wondered if I was dreaming the snow, if I was still alive, and I opened my eyes to check, surprising the paramedic who was eye to eye with me, on the step below me, walking down the stairs backwards while guiding me down. And then I was on a gurney and in an ambulance and on my way to the hospital, panicking.

I realized suddenly that I did not have a mask. This only added to my panic. I asked for a mask. The paramedic (not the same one who lead me down the stairs) rolled his eyes. He did not give me one. He kind of laughed. Dismissive. He said something to me about it. I can’t remember exactly what he said, but the implication was that if I was with it enough to ask for a mask, I did not need to go to the hospital. I knew then that he thought I was wasting his time. I think I cried then and said out loud to myself, “What is happening to me?” And he said, “You tell me,” sarcastically. I felt like an old hypochondriac lady. I didn’t feel safe with him.

The next thing I remember I was in the hallway leading from the ambulance bay to Emergency. Everything was backed up. The hallway was packed with sick people. I was relieved to be in the hospital, but still didn’t have a mask. I asked for a mask again. I did not get one. I asked a third time. Someone finally gave me one. I’m fairly certain it was not the paramedic.

I tried to get control of my breathing again. Thirty years of practicing yoga came back to me. I breathed in. I breathed out. Several times. Then the paramedic said, “It looks like you’re feeling fine now.” I knew he didn’t believe there was anything wrong with me. He was looking at me with disgust. Disgust. Of this, I am certain.

Paramedic, if you are reading this, know that I was admitted to the hospital after you took me there. I didn’t leave for over a week. It was the start of a health care odyssey that remains ongoing and a diagnosis that was so much worse than anything I could have imagined that night. Know that I’ve had three open heart surgeries since then, and another major open chest surgery. I am grateful to everyone who helped me. You are not one of those people.

You made an already traumatic event worse. I try to figure out why you would imagine someone with an already diagnosed heart problem who called 911 didn’t need help and I can’t. You made me question myself and whether I was panicking for no reason. There was a reason.

In the intervening time, more than once, my doctors have told me I would know if I need to “go in.” They would tell me what to watch for, but would also say, “You will know.” And I have. But I’ve never called an ambulance again.

Rattle and Screech

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I’m disoriented and I can’t really write about it. I make it a policy not to write specifics about other people. They didn’t agree to be part of this blog (or any of my writing, for that matter). They are not content to be scraped. I can’t even be vague because even vague would be identifying.

But let me just say: things are changing around me. I’m going to ignore the fine writing advice of George Orwell and use an over-used metaphor. The ground is shifting.

And I don’t like it.

I’ve spent the day dwelling on it all, to no avail. There are no conclusions to be drawn. There is no plan to be made (at least, not by me), and no action to take.

To use another over-used metaphor, the train is barrelling down the track. But instead of getting on it, I’m a literal bystander, feeling the rattle and screech of it, almost paralyzed by the ease with which it could kill me.

Meanwhile, the Disney cruise ship about to leave Victoria just blasted the first seven notes of “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Seriously. That just happened. It’s loud and ridiculous and maybe funny and also a little too much sugar, enough to make a person feel a bit sick. Or maybe it’s just enough to remember to look for something other than disaster, even if you would NEVER find it on that floating petrie dish spewing pollution into the ocean and air.

What am I saying? People are not at their best right now. Everyone is going through something, whether it be personal or on a bigger scale, we are going through something. We are, if we’re lucky (and have some privilege), bystanders to disaster right now. If we’re not lucky, we’re more than bystanders. Be kinder. Don’t honk at people if they hesitate an extra second at the intersection or fumble at the grocery store self check-out. Everyone needs a minute to get their bearings.

Feeling Human

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Gratitude can live side by side with resentment. They are unhappy neighbours but learn to co-exist somehow.

Ask any chronically ill or disabled person. Or their care-givers and loved ones. We know the good and the bad live together.

We can still grow from what was. Like new trees from fallen giants. Growth can come from disaster.
A new tree growing from a giant tree stump.

We are only human after all with all kinds of feelings.

And feelings are better than no feelings.

What Doesn’t Kill You

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My cardiologist told me this week that more extensive testing reveals that one of the things that could kill me is not really a thing.

Good news.

Another thing that was trying to kill me, a complication from the last open heart surgery, has been fixed by a simple but gross procedure.

That’s two things that could kill me crossed off the list in one week. Not a bad week.

The other thing trying to kill me is still a thing, but there is a plan and there are options and I am not out of time.

I was expecting this thing to progress quickly and cause dramatic symptoms. That’s how it’s been in the past. This will allegedly progress much slower. There may be yet another open heart surgery in my future, but not immediately. There are other options to try first.

I am, once again, going with the optimism. Foolish? Maybe. But if you’ve been reading this blog, you’ll know this is what I do. Know the worst outcome, wrestle with it, and then choose to believe in the best. I have occasional lapses. Some news is pretty dark. But mostly, I get there.

As for the last two things trying to kill me, they remain under surveillance. I try mostly to forget about them. Mostly I am successful.

And, it’s worth noting that I could get hit by a bus or by falling satellite debris. Anything is possible, including living.

For the record, none of the things not killing me is making me stronger. If you’ve ever said, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” to someone, go apologize at once.

My own personal Chernobyl

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A long time ago, I thought of writing an essay about radiation. That was prior to my first cancer diagnosis, and prior to receiving radiation therapy which, at first, saved my life and is now killing me. It’s not really fair to say radiation snuck up on me; I had always been aware of it.

When I first imagined the radiation essay, I was thinking a lot about nuclear war and nuclear power and the risk of poisoning the environment. The Three Mile Island nuclear disaster happened in 1979 when I was sixteen years old, and it had a strong effect on me. I was not part of the generation that had to practice “duck and cover” in case of nuclear war, but I knew too much about what time it was on the Doomsday Clock. I was a kid who thought a lot about radiation.

I saw photos of people after Hiroshima, their skin falling off them in ribbons. In 1982, like so many others, I saw the film, “If You Love This Planet,” a plea by Dr. Helen Caldicott to end the insanity of the arms race and nuclear proliferation. Then, Chernobyl in 1986. In the 90’s, I got the opportunity to interview Caldicott for a small local newspaper when she was visiting Alberta to oppose efforts to build a nuclear power plant in Peace country. Peace country, rather inconveniently, sits on fault lines. I don’t know, but it seemed like a bad idea to me. Caldicott remains a hero to me.

I wondered what my own personal exposure to radiation had been. Could a person somehow tally up their dental x-rays and other x-rays, their exposure to all kinds of environmental radiation and know anything valuable? I realized soon enough I did not have the scientific knowledge I needed to write such an essay and dropped it. Dr. Ursula Franklin and others had brilliantly proven that nuclear tests were leaving their trace in humans, finding strontium-90 in the baby teeth that mothers had saved. Other much more knowledgeable people were on it.

Years later, one of my few “viral” moments on social media occurred after being awakened by a public alert about a situation at the Pickering Nuclear Plant which sits on the shore of Lake Ontario. I can’t remember exactly what happened anymore—it was like a sneaker wave. It’s just a wave until it isn’t. I posted something in the darkness about how it seemed a lot people were just reminded that there’s a huge and aging nuclear plant on one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.

I had been to a protest at the Pickering plant before with a group of Raging Grannies who were opposed to efforts to continue its operation past its best-before date. There was a meeting of fat cats and regulators going on inside and the Grannies tried to get in. We were not successful. I had to de-escalate a situation which may very well have resulted in the arrest of one of my compatriots who was well into her 80’s at the time. I saw first-hand how opposition would not be tolerated. They were scared of a frail 80 year old. Take from that what you will.

Somewhere between Helen Caldicott and Pickering came the radiation therapy. And now, twenty-odd years later, I know, finally, what the essay is about. It’s not an essay I need a big background in science to write. It’s about me and my own personal Chernobyl. It’s about what I will die of.

I likely will never write it. I don’t want to spend my time right now alone and writing. But maybe you can imagine I wrote it. Maybe this IS the essay.

I try to be sanguine about my situation. I see no other route that allows me to carry on. And then some little problem, a problem that was a subset of the larger disaster, demands its time in the sun.

I think of these problems as sneaker waves. Sure, we knew the wave was there, but it was nothing until it wasn’t. We humans can be pretty good at setting important things aside, even humans like me who don’t really go in for denial. In time, I return to sanguinity.

I realize that there is no part of this word that means “relaxed,” but the word sanguine itself seems relaxed. It’s the “s” sound, the way the word feels loose when spoken. The sounds are soft, and I have to stay soft. So I’ll write an essay about not writing an essay. So much easier.