Sitting around the house in your shorts when it’s 95-degrees outside; doing nothing except eating, sleeping and watching endless hours of Ken Burns documentaries, would be an ideal five-day vacation for some. And that part of this past week was pretty good, but life always seems to extract a “pound of flesh” from me in exchange for anything good that happens.
This laid-back week was paid for by me taking on a dose of the coronavirus!
So, if I mis-led you into thinking Coronaville was something like Margaritaville; I’m so sorry.
Trips take a detour
After a day of covering my fav sport, girls’ softball, during the sweltering heat of the day on recent Sunday, I was not surprised when I could not sleep well all night because of a persistent cough to keep my lungs clear. You know, old guys like me don’t always “handle” hot weather.
After Sunday’s games, I had hoped to hit the road on my trusty cycle-with-sidecar for a week-long trip to western Colorado with my “brothers” of the U S Sidecar Association. Meanwhile, the Missus was set to depart on a sisters’ road trip to Buffalo (three from here going to visit one out there). But those plans all crashed when my just-to-be-safe-home COVID-19 test came back “positive”. That led to a follow-up test at the local health department the next day that verified the home test.
Current protocols ask a positive tester to spend five days isolated at home, as much as possible in a room by themselves, and then to wear a mask for five more days. That didn’t appear to be too much of an ask. Tracing would have been impossible, after all, who knows which of 200 players or parents, if any of them, inadvertently, helped the virus find me at the tournament last week-end.
But the potential seriousness of the virus, that has been stalking us all for the past 2 ½ years, can’t be taken lightly since a million of our friends and neighbors have not been able to out-run it. In fact, in the past month, my two sisters, both older, have both been very ill with respiratory illnesses. One had COVID, while the other suffered from many of the same symptoms. Both ended up in re-hab before returning home.
Nurse Jane on the job
On the home front, wife Jane, stepped into the fray and began to make thinks work. I was, more or less, confined to the upper floor of our split-level home and that got me to my office. But who knew that by day two, she would morph into Nurse Ratched. Surely, she was not bitter over the lost vacation. Maybe some folks just can’t handle that much authority! LOL
To assist in the healing process, my local medical staff prescribed a new drug called Paxlovid for folks who have already contracted COVID-19 and I’m sure those meds will help.
I made it through the first five-day quarantine with light symptoms; so far so good. I realize how lucky I’ve been and how things can “turn on a dime”, but for the moment, the detour was brief.
But I think I’ll try Margaritaville next time.
And also, Jane has never watched the movie, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, so you might not tell her about Nurse Ratched, she thinks it was a term of endearment.
