Yes.
Me.
It was one of those strange, unscientific surveys on Facebook. It was a yes or no question. And I found that annoying. I wanted to fill in the blanks. I wanted to talk about my unsung, unheralded life and death experience. I wanted someone, anyone, to listen to my COVID story.
The problem is that I had COVID before it was on anyone’s hysteria radar.
My husband works for a huge, international corporation with the huge international headquarters located in the once lovely city of San Francisco. In January of 2020, my hardworking husband traveled on a Jet plane to the once lovely city of San Francisco. At the huge international headquarters of his company he talked, shook hands, chitted and chatted, and hung out in the huge international cafeteria. Note: International means people from all corners of the world travel back and forth, to and fro, in and out from all corners of China . . . er . . . um . . . I mean the world, including the North Pole.
He came home—coughing—his guts out. I blamed the Jet plane. “Yuck, dirty, dirty airplanes. Go to the doctor.” He did. They gave him the standard protocol and said, “You have a virus. Go home.”
He did.
And promptly infected me.
Sick for three weeks, from January into February, I kept saying to anyone who would listen, “I’m dying. This is the weirdest cold.”
Ha. Ha. Ha. They all laughed. YaYa’s dying. They laughed some more.
“I feel like I’m drowning,” I cried out. No one answered.
Snot bubbled out of me like lava. When the coughing started, I coughed until I was light-headed and near fainting. “This is the weirdest cold I’ve ever had,” I cried to the empty air, which I could not get enough of into my body.
Three weeks and I was cured by Cuban chicken soup from a good friend.
When I heard a woman on television describing her, finally acknowledged, pandemic symptoms, saying, “I felt like I was drowning.”
“Yes!” I cried to a woman on television who could not hear me. “Yes. I had that too.”
No one answered me.
And then everyone went hysterical, but it was too late. I was better. Sigh.
And then we got COVID again, a year later in January, and if I get this stupid thing next January, vaccinated or not, I’m tapping out.
Linda (Breathless in Saint Cloud) Zern
