Pandemic Prose
It’s four in the morning and that familiar scratch is in the back of my throat, my nose feels like my daughter shoved playdough up it while I was sleeping, and it’s accompanied by a pounding headache. Two years ago, I’d have done a Halls+Sudafed+Excedrin combo and proceeded about my day, but it’s not that simple anymore. Every symptom counts, and sick call does not exist. Not in the traditional sense anyway, because if you exhibit any sign or symptom of the dreadful Covid-19, then you have to get tested. The problem is the symptom range encompasses about every major and minor illness that you can catch in life.
I drag myself out of bed and proceed to the nearest testing site while noting to anybody important that I’m feeling ill again, and need to rule out the elephant in the room. My brain is telling me that I’m perfectly fine, and I believe it but ‘just to be safe’ has been a motto for the last 24 months and so I’m in my car listening to my tires box with Biloxi potholes on my way to the medical center.
I am a morning person, and that works to my advantage, I’m so close to the front of the line that I can see the clipboard clique preparing for battle. They’re about to be inundated with a boulevard’s length of people in cars waiting to get their noses tickled. I say a small prayer for their sanity, and for warm toes because it’s wild chilly this morning. It feels like I’m being assaulted by Jack Frost when I roll down the window and get a hit of the breeze. If I wasn’t awake before, I certainly am now.
Filling out the questionnaire takes no time at all; by this visit, I’ve memorized the paper and could fill it out in my sleep. Our cars are slowly moving now, trickling into the overhang where we’re getting our swabs for the day. I read off my DOB and prepare for my intimate moment with the nurse. Now, I don’t know if it was the temperature outside, or if I am just too forgiving because she definitely stabbed me far into my nostril. The only explanation for the aggressive swab that I can think of, is that the woman had simply been standing in the cold so much that morning that she temporarily lost feeling in her testing hand. She didn’t know her own strength, word to Whitney Houston. I pull off into the sunrise and head home to isolate myself until my results come back.
Another day, another Covid test was complete. Fingers crossed I come back tomorrow and it’s negative. Tah tah for now.