008. YOU PROBABLY DON’T CARE BECAUSE YOU’VE HAD IT ALREADY
A first-timers reflection on Covid and why no one talks about this mass trauma anymore
Day 1
The tiptoe of symptoms. Quiet. Unobtrusive. Annoying.
It’s the sore throat- I love food so much so having to tuck away the junk food pantry items for a concoction of lemon/honey/ginger just hurts my soul right now. Maybe it’ll pass. Maybe it was all those fizzy drinks and beer I’ve had lately.
My muscles or lack of any right now, feel heavy. About as heavy as I felt when I last took weed and I felt like I couldn’t get up. Even my fingers hurt. Is this even possible? I’m relinquished reluctantly to bed and the only thought I have is if I should log in and check work emails. I had a presentation I was actually looking forward to today so not being there was just gutting. I’m a millennial whose days are reduced to working that 7:30-5pm; checking those hand-drawn squares of redemption seems to be the only thing getting me to that next payday.
I find a box of emergency RATS tests aka Covid tests I kept for this very cause. Oh what the hell. Let’s do one. Fifteen minutes later.
Fuck.
After two and a half years of beating it and miraculously swatting it away, she has claimed me.
So I’m not just suffering from the effects of burnout.
I text Sam.
“I have Covid”.
“Can you get me please some soup and bananas and oranges please X”
I’ve barely eaten. A banana and a mandarin because I googled what would be good to help with covid: magnesium and vitamin b6. Oh google. Took one bite of each and almost threw up. Maybe it’s the migraine. Taking a panadol to subside this pain to my overthinking mass of a brain.
Day 2
I’m dizzy and hungry as fuck.
It’s the kind of motion sickness I’d usually get on a plane ride but the kind where going up and down stairs is a massive feat. My legs have turned to jelly. As I hobble down each step, placing two feet carefully on each carpeted step, I’m thinking thank god we got the builder in for this handrail. The stairs didn’t have one before and yes we were kinda worried that Henry (the pug) would fall through because of how old he is but he’s been alright. In this case though, I was grasping onto that un-sanded piece of timber with one hand and my other hand making sense of the lack of a non-existent piece of grip on the opposite wall on the other. What would have taken me 2 seconds to run up and down on has taken me a total of 3 minutes and 58 seconds.
As I make my way down to the kitchen, the Virgo in me feels inclined to clean. I start by putting plastic containers back into the cupboard. Shaking off the residue water with as much motion as I can muster. There’s this weird sense that everything is moving in slo-mo. A blur. It’s like my actions are 10 secs ahead of what’s registering in my mind. I think of graphic novels and the swift movements from one scene to the next. It’s like reading a scene but still reliving what happened in the previous segment.
I suddenly remember I have to feed Henry. I’m right on schedule but my body is slowing down and I’m already exhausted after that one daunting but satisfying task. I reach into the fridge for his combo of rice, broccoli and bone broth and place these on the kitchen counter. I find myself doubling over with this hazy weight on my shoulders. I’m tired as fuck and the energy I thought I had back again has somehow evaporated into thin air and all I can muster up is a dry cough. I act quickly.
One part rice. One part broccoli. Two parts bone broth. One defrosted lamb and venison raw meat cube.
Mash that up with a fork in his bowl and try not to throw up at the smell. Done.
Above the whimpers and the impatient little barks, he settles into a mushy soup of a meal healthier than what I’ve had lately. As he looks up from his already dunked face, the mixture has already congealed around the delicate folds of his cute pug smushed face.
Sigh.
I’m going to have to baby wipe that face after.
First port of call. Two Panadols.
I grab a banana and a mandarin and make myself a tea. Waiting around for Henry to finish slurping seems like eternity but he’s back inside licking residue segments found in the crevices of his bunny rabbit shaped paws. I’ll leave him downstairs. Sleep calls.
I wake up to his scratching and suddenly feel in the mood for soup. I feel fine I tell myself. I can do this. I open up my work laptop. No I can’t.
But maybe baby steps.
Let’s clear a few emails.
Let’s do a few new product forms till 10pm while watching Northern Rescue on Netflix.
“You sound a lot better!”
Yeah I feel it too!
I stay up till 2:30am to indulge in the silence and the uneven amount of sleep I’ve had all day. I need to rest.
But what if my brain can’t?
I drift off to sleep with that very thought in mind as I try to remain comfortable with a pug in the bed splayed beneath the covers, pressed against one’s knee ditches that are already itchy.
Does he have fleas?
Day 3
Why does my head hurt?
I turn over and see light peeking through the shades. I should be up. I should be at work. I’m late. No I’m not. I’m supposed to be resting. But I’m bored. And now the muscle aches are back. Maybe I’ll check my emails a little.
“I wasn’t aware of this, Rachel can you please advise?”
“Just wondering when we would get the information on these sets as the deadline has passed?”
“Please have this back to me by lunchtime today”
“We’ll need to work harder on that submission- see below”
“Testing on this will be next, can you advise if these need to be included?”
Sigh.
I reply.
Yes.
I’m still waiting on final pricing.
Pass.
Noted.
Yes, include all.
I’m already drained. I close my laptop and roll over to blow my nose once more. The weight of requests has me feeling helpless and less like my punctual self. Perhaps this was a test in How to Relax 101.
And I fucking failed.
Let’s do socials instead. I head to my account on Instagram and setup for Wishlist Wednesdays- a weekly roundup of everything saved that week from apparel to homeware to beauty and more. Ok, I guess I need to update the masses in that typical ‘influencer’ kind of way. Ok done. Now they know I won’t be posting a whole lot till I get better.
Post 1 shared. Little blurb, little tag.
Next.
Post 2 shared. Little blurb, little tag.
You get the gist.
Post 14.
Head in my hands. Headache is back.
Ok I’m done. I’ve done it. I’m offline.
Why am I not fucking hungry?
Milly would make such a great girl’s name.
I need sleep tea.
The builders’ just popped out for 20 mins he says. Ok, best chance now to go downstairs, pop two Panadols and make a tea looking like a troll. I stand in the living room taking in the morning light. I feel helpless and like my thoughts are all mush. Getting up and down the stairs is getting better. Kettle on. Tea bag in. Do I even have a favourite mug anymore? I shakily pour hot water into my mug and carry it upstairs with a banana under my arm and a mandarin in the other hand. Much to my detriment, the tea bag is still swimming in the mug. It’s ok, I’m too tired to argue with my internal Virgoian attributes and expectations today.
Crawl into bed.
Sleep.
Day 4
Blocked up as hell. At least I slept through the night. That Panadeine I had from the removal of a tooth awhile back has done wonders with my sleep patterns - drifting listlessly out of the warm confounds of a queen-sized duvet that needs replacing and yet again, being pushed to the side via a furry little mammal. I roll over and look to the side of the bed. Mounds of snotty tissues spread across the carpet like a bed of daisies, delicate yet filled with the very bane of my existence. Omg my taste is gone. A flashback to simpler times of gorging on a plethora of snacks has me in a chokehold- oh why oh why did I take that for granted? Every moment of having a bite of something good or bad was everything and now the very congee my friend brought over just tastes like nothing. Pork, ginger, spring onion, soy sauce. Gone. Textures converge.
If I wasn’t depressed before I am now.
The amount of toilet rolls I’ve been through blowing my nose is too much to share. It feels like the days where toilet paper was the number one thing hoarded during the pandemic. Reams of 2-ply surround the bed like cast-offs from a hens party of tissue wedding gowns. My eyes flutter shut. A builder yells his existence in the distance, I manage some sort of sound back.
Hours pass.
I reach for my laptop bag, why is it so heavy?
Stretch open the screen.
The blinding lights of the screen are too much to bear- what was I thinking with this brightness. A quick check of emails and I find myself drafting up ones to send on Monday -
‘ NEW PRODUCT ALERT’
Please find attached a new product form, e-commerce and high res images of all products as well as one-pagers on each of the products for your perusal.
Kindest regards.
I’m done. It’s all too much.
My brain feels mushy and squeezed dry of sanity.
Nap.
Day 5
My throat is parched.
I think I can smell again.
My taste seems to come back in waves. I know this because, I’m finding myself recognising when a cup of water is ‘old’. There’s this weird area next to the bed where if water is left there for three days it starts to taste chemically off. Tangy with a hint of bedroom dust. Gross, I know. Sam pokes his head in, he sniffs and coughs. Oh no.
‘Are you ok?’ I ask.
‘Ahh not really, I’ve got a sore throat ay’, he says.
‘Shit’.
He goes off to work. I go back to bed. A quick glance at the black laptop bag leaning against the doorframe. Should I? Nah. I really don’t have it in me today. I crawl back to bed, proud of the swift decision to just slightly graze the edge of work, just 2 steps away, even though my anxiety levels at not checking emails is through the roof. To give context, being away for one day can give me a delightful return of close to 100 emails, all with a sense of extreme urgency. I felt nervous. But what could I do?
My body felt like it was failing.
Why the fuck didn’t I keep up with my gym membership.
I need to get back on vitamins and gut powder again.
I get a text.
Sam: ‘Has the builder come round yet? I’m not feeling well and need some rest’.
My head lands in my hands.
Fuck. He’s got it too. I know he does.
‘Nah, not yet! ‘I say.
What seems like 5 hours later, Sam comes home, face drained, fetal positioned on the couch, fever, sore throat.
Test: positive.
I guess we can sleep together now.
It was here where the next few days I started to feel the brain fog in full force. The logging of all these details and the day-to-day became frustrating as hell - I knew the answers. The execution just had me in a chokehold and I panicked. The anxiety seemed to envelop like I was caught in a riptide and couldn’t get out.
The crybaby waterworks strapped themselves in as the only form of justification. It was all that I could utter at such short notice. I felt drained and my eyes were puffy.
Great. Puffy eyes at work the next day. The kind where no teabag or cooling mechanism was going to disguise these bulges. I had everyone asking if I was ok after the little meltdown I had the day before - it was already a long day and I was tired and all I wanted to do was finish off a stock order only to find the methods with which I had set up my order was somewhat incorrect to what was communicated to the rest of the brand managers. Sigh. Why me. 10 seconds later I was balling my eyes out and went home early where I cried some more, triggered by the soft wavering’s of an ‘Are you ok?’.
But why is it that no one talks about Covid anymore?
It caused mass trauma and who could forget the deaths? Yet fast forward 2 years and its still lingering and its relevance waved off like a leaf blowing in the wind. But what of this mass amnesia? One moment it was that death tolls were on the rise and it was all just ‘one death too many’, now we have experts not sure if we can still constitute this as a pandemic. Covid-19 still kills thousands of people around the world each month and now throw into the mix the element of ‘Long Covid’- as it continues to evolve, so too does the variant as it makes its way across the globe. I guess we’re no longer in crisis mode and outside this so-called emergency phase but overall it’s bloody confusing. Its no wonder language has the means to spur action from officials and public alike and even its very usage can spark outrage and evoke action.
This very label has its implications - is it over or is its just an annoying lingering sibling? Saying a pandemic is over gives reason to the masses to agree to the fact of it being over, it no longer exists, its time to move on, assuming the population already has moved on that is. We’re in a different place now than we were when it first hit us - mandates have gone, masks are readily available, at-home Covid tests at the helm, public distancing rules squashed and emergency declarations are non-existent. It seems society has adopted this sort of understanding and underlying sense of pulling out the flu vibes and staying home and getting tested when necessary. In other words, we’ve all been through it, so it seems only fair to act accordingly when a runny nose or sore throat decides to make its debut.
Are we still in a pandemic?
At this rate, it seems the experts can’t decide either, so its equally up to you. As for me, its now Day 15 and I have the 100-day cough still lingering.
** its now Day 20 and the cough is still here and thriving. I’m not going to lie, its slowly becoming a part of me in the worst way possible and I’ve found myself reaching for my inhaler whilst waiting at a red light in traffic. Cough lollies at the helm. She’s a tea-lover now apparently.
It definitely is a huge reality check than we could ever ask for. I don't even know what to say. COVID is such a blur to me and not knowing if there is a permanent full stop to this is honestly scary. It's like we are hanging on to this earth by a little thread and yet we are nonchalant of it.