Symptoms of the times

After a certain age, and what age that might be varies, your attention to the world and its goings-on is minimized to that which concerns your ever falling apart or mucking up body. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another and another.

Geesh. Give me a break! Wait – let me rephrase that.

So, as I sit here contemplating what I will write about this week, my wretched physical body and its accompanying mental state have become the epicenter of my focus.

A raging global pandemic, the onslaught of a “different” Christmas, a divided citizenship, unvacuumed rugs, etc. are merely the background to my focus on me. This is truly pitiful.

It started last Tuesday. I was pretty smug about closing in on finishing the plans for the arrival of my youngest sister who was expected to arrive on Wednesday. Her trip, which takes about four hours no matter if she drives here or we drive there, is the latest iteration of our creative methodology for sharing holidays when there are more people to share them with than the nuclear family. At one time we would get together at her house on Thanksgiving for something we called Thanksmas. Other times it was New Christmas sometime near Jan. 1. Now, with aging bodies and other complications, it has fallen to her driving here rather than us driving there.

On my end, I’d been preparing the gifts for her to return home with, along with a plan for a celebratory early Christmas dinner. Our son was coming in from Rochester and our daughter would be wending her way from Cazenovia with her boys. The house was clean, the menu planned: chicken and biscuits plus a cannoli cake. (I should share that Cannoli cake recipe. It is really good … and easy.)

Yes, I know … gatherings at home? There were less than 10 of us, and all in good, or relatively good health.

You know, you can never really plan for everything.

It was close to 2 p.m. when I noticed that it felt like I had swallowed the Brillo pad that I had been using to scrub the pot earlier in the day. The headache came later, accompanied by an annoying dizziness when I moved my head or got up from a chair. But it was the nausea that made me think that I’d better do something quickly. Standing in front of my personal pharmacopeia, I had a wide selection of nostrums from which to choose. Simethicone to ameliorate the biliousness, ibuprofen for the headache and muscle aches that had joined the list of physical complaints and Claritin D for the post-nasal river of mucus that was, in my mind, one of the chief causes of my increasing misery.

“This will pass,” I thought. “What could I have eaten in the last day or two that might be the culprit? Did I come in contact with anyone who looked sick?”

But then, how could you tell when we are all wearing masks? An assortment of meds on board, I thought that a short nap might help.

It didn’t. I felt worse.

I thought, “I’ll feel better tomorrow. If I don’t feel better by 7 a.m., I’ll call my sister and tell her to stay home.”

At 9 a.m. Wednesday morning I felt even more awful. It was too late to wave everyone off. Time to dig down deep and pretend that I didn’t feel like crap. Excuse the term, but I can’t think of a better word to describe my state of being. I managed to set the table and hoped that I wasn’t contagious.

Smiling an Academy Award smile, we made it through the day, dinner and all. When my guests finally left, I collapsed and promised myself that I would seek professional attention if I didn’t feel better by Friday.

On Monday I called the doctor’s office.

The triage nurse listened to the long list of signs and symptoms and told me that I should be seen. She gave me directions to a newly-created specialty that the practice had set up, identified as the sick office. OH, joy!

I was sure that there would be a Marcus Welby moment, a denouement when my problems would be shown to be caused by some obscure malady or, alternately, some dumb thing I had done. I really felt sick.

Of course, just like when you take your car in with the funny noise and no one can identify anything wrong, my vital signs were perfect. As the young PA pronounced me not really sick, I caught a reflection of myself in the metal of the tissue dispenser. I looked like I felt.

“I don’t usually look this bad, you know,” I said. “Could it be the flu? I’ve only eaten two eggs and three slices of bread since Wednesday.” The latter was, for me, a telltale sign that something was off. After all, I’m the gal who was snacking on pretzels during labor.

I still felt just awful. Nothing had gotten any better.

“It’s probably something viral, even the flu” the PA said. “The best we can do is to treat the symptoms.”

She promised to send a prescription to my pharmacy and advised me to take ibuprofen for pain and to hydrate. I sat there thinking that the degree of my misery deserved something more.

“Just to be safe, she added, “Your age and your symptoms make you a candidate for a COVID-19 test.” Oh, goodie.

It was time for a swab up the nose and quarantine until the results come in, which would be in three days. So, I am home, a little bit better, on the odd hour, with a prescription for some big-time stomach meds and not a clue what to write about. One more day to go of isolation. Fingers crossed.

Is writer’s block a symptom of the virus?

Editor’s note: After writing this, Ann got word that her test for COVID-19 was negative. No news on the cannoli cake recipe, however.