I’m watching Terminator Eleventeenth: Cyborgs Can Age, Too, petting Molly in the 3 a.m. darkness.
I tested positive for COVID three weeks ago. I do not think I should still be in this shape.
I think maybe in the morning I will go see my primary care doc. But I am so tired and I’ve only met my doctor once, when we first moved here, and I don’t remember how to find her. And she’s going to want x-rays which means identifying and arriving at a second location, and that just sounds like so much work.
I’ll get Eden off to school, and go after. And then maybe get back in time for bus pickup and dinner. It’ll be fine.
It is puzzling and oddly beautiful, this human capacity to lie to ourselves. How do we do that? Is it a split personality thing? It has to be, doesn’t it? If I am lying to myself there must be two of me.
I am starting to be afraid that I am going to stop breathing.
Where are my effer wool slippers, the ones with the good soles?
“If they have to intubate me,” I text Miss Bubsie, “I want you making medical decisions, not Mary. Don’t let her think for a second she has a say. And my will is in the top drawer of my desk.”
“I have a copy of your will,” she replies. “Go to the hospital.”
The better hospital is 30 minutes away. The ok hospital is ten. I go for ok, because it doesn’t involve merging.
Not that there is anyone on the road, anyway.
It occurs to me to speed so a cop will pull me over, find me gasping and give me an escort. That would be super-fun, but it sounds like a lot of work, so I just focus and aim the car.
About 12.5 minutes later I’m on a gurney surrounded by women in scrubs, with a gagillion of those sticky heart-monitor leads and all kinda needles and stuff coming at me.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” I gasp. “But do you think I will be out of here by 3:00 this afternoon to get to my kids’ bus stop?”
I can tell they think I am adorable.
The coughing kicks in, and of course I wet myself, and I say something about how my uterus is going to shoot out any minute and they say, “Girl, wouldn’t that be for the best? We’d clean up the mess and everything.” — And now I’m laughing and pissing myself again, and they’re laughing at me even harder and getting me a towel and GOD it’s just so much better when it’s only women.
“Plan on being here a few days, baby,” they tell me.
Good news streams in: blood pressure is great. EKG is normal. They take about fifteen vials of my blood.
“This is a steroid for your lungs,” my girl Heather says, stuffing a syringe into my i.v.. “You’re going to feel it, it’s cold.”
But she’s wrong. It’s not cold.
“HOLY SHIT,” I say, and start to writhe. She jumps back.
“What?”
“OH MAH GAWD IT’S LIKE NEEDLES.” I know this might mean an allergic reaction or some kind of medical mistake of the variety that will have Mary and Miss Bubsie calling James Sokolav, but I am so distracted by the horror of it I almost laugh.
“Where are you feeling it?” she asks in the exact same tone I use when one of my children has a dangling extremity.
“My scalp!” I say, which is not a lie, but also not entirely the truth.
The place I am feeling it the worst, ladies and gentlemen, is in my cooter.
And for all my wisdom and my years, and my happiness at women care providers, I just cannot bring myself to say my vulva is aflame.
“MY SCALLLLLLP!” I scream.
In a few minutes, it goes away. Like it never happened. Cooter is restored to its normal resting sensation.
I am wildly curious about this bizarre side effect that I will not be discussing with my providers at this time.
I get rolled down to x-ray. I get x-rayed. I get rolled back to emergency. I get rolled to the john a couple of times. They test my oxygen levels with me standing. They test me walking. They test me doing the step, bump, step, bump-bump.
I am just most definitely not functioning as I should in the lung department.
They wheel me down to CT scan.
The nice CT lady gives me yet another i.v.. She has to put contrast in one, and take out blood in another or something, I dunno. I just lie there.
“This will create a warm sensation,” she is inserting a syringe. “And you may feel like you peed yourself, but I promise you didn’t.”
“Maybe I did, though,” I confess.
She pushes the stopper into the vial and OOOOOOOWHEEE BABY IT IS WARM.
IN MY COOTER.
What the fuck?
I start laughing.
“I know,” she says, with a little blush. “I’ve had it done.”
“Why though? Why does it go straight … there?”
“Because of the large groin arteries,” she says.
Oh. I love science.
I am back in my little ER bay with Heather. My COVID test is negative, I am definitely not currently infected. The CT scan shows COVID scarring.
“So, basically, COVID broke my body?” I say.
Yes, she says. But.
“Sepsis. I want to check for sepsis.”
That should terrify me. It just makes me cosmically sad. I’m on my back on a hospital gurney staring at hospital ceiling tiles, fighting to breathe, and they think I have sepsis.
This is exactly what happened to that Grand Man about a year ago. This was his ending.
“Ok,” I say. “Thanks for letting me know.”
I check the time. Eden needs to get up for school. The last she saw of me it was bedtime at Coven House and all was normal. Now I am FaceTiming her from the hospital, with tubes all in me. She stares at my face and blinks. Hard. Repeatedly.
“I am fine,” I gasp. “And your day will continue as normal. Once you’re all dressed and ready, go wait in the driveway. Madison’s mom will take you to school.”
I smile. She freaks out and hangs up.
Later she tells me how much I looked like Grandad. Glasses, oxygen tube, short breathing. Pretty fucking surreal way to wake up. Sorry, kid.
I text Mary at college. “Talk to Eden, she’s losing it.” So Mary calls her and stays on the phone as Eden gets ready for school. I watch on the house camera as Madison’s mom pulls up, gets out and hugs Eden, and then they zip off for school. I reset the house alarm and then I lie down because THAT was a lot of work.
My girl Heather comes to say goodbye. “The hospitalist will be down in a bit to admit you,” she says. “As soon as a bed opens, you’ll go up. Good luck. Invest in some Depends.”
“Fuck you and thanks,” I say.
I try to finish the Terminator movie on my phone, but my phone is so freaking heavy, I just close my eyes.
I have the feeling of someone LOOMING. I hate that. I open my eyes.
“I am Dr. Fuckface,” he says. (That wasn’t his real name, it’s just when I pick pseudonyms I like to give insight to character.)
“Hi,” I say.
“I am here to admit you.”
“Ok.”
“You don’t have COVID.”
“I know. I had it January 15th.”
“You’re vaccinated, so you were fine after five days.”
“Thanks for explaining. So what do you think is wrong with me?”
“Your respiration is very high. But your oxygen level is not dangerous-dangerous.”
“What a relief.”
“And I expect to see COVID scarring for up to several months after infection.”
“Well all right, then. So what’s going on with me?”
“I think you are having a panic attack.”
“Oh.” I say. “Magical.”
“Your heart rate is very high.”
“You did just pump me full of steroids.”
“You are not currently infected with COVID. And you do –“and here he really LOOMS, “have a history of anxiety and depression.”
Cutting to the good part: I took off all my leads and hookies and needley thingies, located my effer slippers with the good soles, and bailed.
“Did you AMA?” my doctor asks when we talk that afternoon. “The chart says you AMA’d.”
“I think you have to sign something to AMA. I just left.”
“I don’t blame you,” she says.
“Yeah, if I want to be picked on, I can just go home and have my kids do it.”
“Would you feel comfortable giving me his name?”
“Oh, absolutely. That’s F-U-C-K-F-A…”
“I’m looking at your chart and you should be in the hospital.”
“Tragically, that will not be happening. I have a dog and a cat in my lap and I am really trying to achieve my goal of finishing this movie.”
She goes over all my test results in detail — I do not have sepsis — and then calls in a bunch of drugs and and a pulse oximeter. We agree on terms for my going back to the hospital if none of this works.
“This is going to be a long haul,” she says. “We don’t really understand how this virus works and there’s not much we know how to do at this point for people who experience symptoms post-infection.”
“Okay,” I say. “Do you have a timeline for how long I will be like this?”
“Patients I have seen like you can take up to six months or longer and some have lasting effects.”
Direct, clear, no bullshit. I’m going to make it a point to learn where her office is.
Sunbeam is downstairs. The drugs kick in and I fall asleep to the sound of her giggling and feeding my children while her wolf-boy squeals. Breathing still hurts.
But it’s really nice to be home.