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Today is my 6th Coronaversary. Please clap. CW: pregnancy loss, death, covid. Sorry.
Twelve years ago today, we were home, fresh off a honeymoon to the Amalfi Coast. My husband was planting tomatoes in containers on the front porch, while my daughter watched him through the window.
My first miscarriage started the night before our flight to Italy. I went to the ER early in the morning.
“I would recommend that you not travel,” the doctor told me. “Miscarriages can get unpredictable real fast. I’d hate for you to hemorrhage at 30,000 feet.”
She took a beat.
“Or, worse.”
But we had to make a stop on the way. I got divorced about 18 months before this, and it was my daughter’s first visitation with her dad in England. We were dropping her off at Heathrow, staying the night in London, and heading to Naples the next day. I couldn’t NOT go.
I bought some pads on the way to the airport, took some ibuprofen, and spent most of the flight in the bathroom. I cried when I considered that our baby could end up in blue ice somewhere over Newfoundland.
We landed, did the handoff, got some chips, flew to Italy, bussed to Sorrento, and hiked the high trail portion of the Path of the Gods. It’s just over six miles along the cliffsides to Nocelle from Bomerano. I’d stop and hide behind trees and near waterfalls to deal with the bleeding every 30-45 minutes, telling my husband I was fine. This was normal.
Reader, it was not normal. I knew that.
We carried on, hiking the 1700 steps down to Positano and sea level. Had a good laugh at an Italian man in a convertible who stopped traffic in the middle of town to yell, “Hey! Does anybody know the way to Positano?!” at the tourists. We had some pizza, a glass of wine, and I changed again and again. We climbed the 1700 steps back up to our hotel, and then the additional 200 steep steps to reach the front door, where we were greeted with sparkling water and Castelvetrano olives.
I really needed that salt.
Nine years ago, I was posting videos of the baby with a bunny filter while we waited for biscuits and hash brown casserole at Cracker Barrel. He wouldn’t stop gummy kissing his big sister.
Six years ago, I shared a post from Dolly Parton about her friend, a doctor and researcher at Vanderbilt. He was making “exciting advancements” in researching a coronavirus cure, and she donated $1 million to support the research and encourage more people to contribute.
My caption simply read, “Queen.”
A few hours later, I made a post about a food pantry and thrift store in town that were offering boxes of free food to anyone in need. I explained how to donate.
My daughter and I started a new “mother-daughter” activity during quarantine. Since it was spring in Austin and warm but not molten lava hot, I’d taken up jogging again. I always wanted to be a runner, but I honestly hated it. I knew I was “double-jointed” and typically ended up with some kind of injury, usually a rolled ankle or plantar fasciitis. But I was in better shape than ever, really taking care of myself for a good couple of years because of the subsequent violent pregnancy losses I’d been through - one leading to a ruptured fallopian tube and emergency surgery after everyone realized I’d been bleeding internally for 4 days.
I kept working.
Driving.
Commuting 2.5-3 hours a day.
The pain was so unbearable at times that I went from crying to mooing.
I kept almost fainting, but not quite.
“It’s to be expected,” I told everyone.
It wasn’t.
But six years ago, I was back up to running 5k three times a week. I was a little sore, but it sure felt good. I was exhausted, but for the previous 2 weeks, since the shutdown started, I had been working 12-16-hour days. I was training an entire department, plus 30 professors, on working remotely and teaching via Zoom and the learning management system. All classes had switched to remote. I was converting all of their course content for them. Most people had no experience teaching in that way. I ended up winning the President’s Exemplary Service Award for my work.
Later in the afternoon, I decided to clean out one of the closets to make room for all the paper towels, toilet paper, and diapers we had collected, seemingly for all four kids to use to build forts. I realized I was out of breath. I said, “Damn, I’m so out of shape that I’m winded moving paper towels around.” My first inclination is always self-criticism. Forget about the fact that I ran 3 miles that morning, nbd.
I coughed a few hours later. It sounded weird. My husband was working at a hospital. He had helped reroute the entire network to accommodate rooms for Covid patients. He built stands for the newly acquired iPads that patients used to speak with family members who couldn’t visit them, to say goodbye to the family who couldn’t hold their hands, or to wave goodbye via FaceTime one last time before intubation.
“I’ve heard that cough,” he said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Wouldn’t it be fucking hilarious if I ended up with Covid?”
March 12, 2020 was a Thursday, the next-to-last day I was in the office. I posted:
“What do we think is more likely? 1. I end up getting coronavirus, or 2. I fall down the stairs at work because I have new varifocals and I can’t see how to step down, but I won’t use the handrail because I’m afraid of catching coronavirus from touching it?”
The cough came and went, as did the breathlessness. I already knew I had POTS, but it was much harder to control. My usually low body temperature of 95.9-96.4 was elevated to a normal 98.6. I was exhausted and couldn’t sleep.
“At least work has calmed down.”
”It’s normal to be exhausted after something like that.”
”The world is a mess, and we’re stuck inside homeschooling. Of course everyone feels like shit.”
”It’s probably just that sinus infection I had in March still lingering.”
By April 23rd, I was running at 99.9 constantly. I say running, but that had stopped. I’d tried once to make it to the end of the road and coughed until I vomited.
I finally called my doctor’s office and was told that I was not old enough to have Covid. They said they couldn’t waste a test on me because someone else would need it more. But then they heard me cough, and they coordinated a test for me. At that time, test centers were set up in the weirdest places. I drove myself down to an abandoned Home Depot, and it looked like that scene from ET when they’ve come to do all the tests on him. A stranger in a hazmat suit had me roll down my window, and she asked me to sit on my hands as she stuck the swab up my nose.
“My friend got punched in the face by a man she was testing the other day. He didn’t mean it, people just aren’t used to getting their brains swabbed.”
Five days passed, and I still hadn’t had my result. At this point, I was working from bed and could hardly breathe. It felt like there was an elephant on my chest, and my body didn’t feel like mine anymore. It felt like it had been taken over by something alien. I just kept telling myself that no news must be good news. I hadn’t sequestered myself from my family because the health department was so sure I didn’t have Covid that they said there was no need. No one else had any symptoms, anyway, and we were 3 weeks into this.
Then I finally got a phone call. A man checked some personal information with me and said, “So, when someone tests positive for coronavirus, there’s a series of steps we have to take for contact tracing and monitoring your illness.” You know when you’re about to witness a car crash, or you see a kid is about to get hurt, and time slows down? That’s what happened. I sat down on the bed and said, “Wait, I tested positive?”
“Yes, did the county not call you?”
No, no, sir. No one called me. He said they’d had the results for 3 days and were supposed to have called me the day they got the info.
I remember feeling with my entire being that this meant I was going to die. That’s what we knew at the time. Covid was killing people at such a rate that there were refrigerated trucks outside hospitals to hold the bodies because morgues were full. I remember thinking I would never leave my bedroom again. Well, not consciously.
What I don’t remember is the rest of the conversation, or telling my husband, or telling my boss, or telling the kids. I do have entire Instagram highlights full of shitposts, memes, and delirious rants. I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t swallow. I heard things that weren’t there and I could only smell smoke. I went to the ER once. My oxygen was low and I hadn’t been able to swallow my own spit for 18 hours. I was dehydrated. Again, doctors and nurses in hazmat gear said things like, “We can’t come in and out of the room because we can’t waste the PPE, so you’ll only have one nurse come in one more time.” They didn’t give me any oxygen, and they charged me for a bag of saline that no one hooked me up to. They wouldn’t touch me. I was given a small Dixie cup full of lidocaine to drink to “soothe my throat,” and they handed it to me using one of those plastic gripper things.
Then they told me not to come back unless I REALLY couldn’t breathe, and WHEN that happened, I should call for an ambulance. Maybe I could pick up some throat lozenges on the way home, but:
“It was pretty reckless of you to expose your family in the car.”
Five years ago, I posted a Clickhole meme of a jack-o-lantern. It said, “Today is Halloween ;) Share if you agree.”
“I agree”
A few hours later, I shared a picture of a small portion of a plain boiled potato with a spoon and a white plate.
“Today’s the 1 year anniversary of the onset of my symptoms. I made a meme to commemorate and make a joke of it, but I’m going to get vulnerable here - this has been the hardest year of my life. It feels like the Artist Formerly Known as Beth has been replaced with somebody else. I know everyone has Covid fatigue. But it consumes every moment of every day for me. There HAVE been improvements - my cognition is probably 60% of the way back. I’ve driven a few times lately. The fatigue doesn’t feel, as I read recently, like I’ve been “hit by a truck and then chloroformed.” I just feel like I was hit by a truck. But since yesterday - I can’t eat without massive reactions leading to asthma attacks. So as I sit here waiting to see if my body sees the plain potato I just ate as a threat, I just - y’all, forgive me if I am just not “me.” I miss me. The scariest part is not having the science to know how much of me I’ll get back. But I sure am glad to be here to bitch about it.”
Reader, my body perceived the potato as a threat. And things got much, much worse for a long time after that.
Four years ago today, I posted this:
I have not posted on Facebook on this day again.
Hugsssss friend 🫂