Pandemic Lockdown, Harry Chapin Park, Brooklyn, NY, March 28, 2020

I first read about the novel corona virus beleaguering Wuhan, China in January 2020. Not to say I was prescient or anything, but I did put in my first N-95 mask order on the 26th of January. Even then they were hard to come by and mostly sold out. So no, I wasn’t the only one that saw the tsunami starting to make its way ashore.

I was just at the forefront of a whole lot of people wanting to keep themselves and their families safe.

By mid-February, in my former role as a NYC agency official, I was in daily COOP meetings, that’s continuity of operations to the uninitiated who did not live or work by acronym.

I’ll add, even before the world first heard of Covid-19, I was the hand-sanitizer “Queen.” My particular division had older staff, many of whom were susceptible to URIs (that’s upper respiratory infections), so we’d instituted an “informal” rule. Everyone had to use hand sanitizer and “Lysol” the crap out of their desks at the end of the day to keep the colds at bay.

Me, I’d taken to wiping down tables, chairs, door handles and the like at the beginning and end of each day, and after each meeting.

The illness though had its own time table no matter our planning, which by March, was just a zero sum game of catch up as the trickle of covid cases started to rise to a crescendo, and we dutifully followed through on the plans to stagger work, et al., especially when our own folks started to get sick before finally shutting down entirely.

I also learned to my chagrin that in one meeting in Mid-March, I had two covid-positive colleagues out of five seated around my cramped meeting table for thirty minutes with the door closed.  But I’d dutifully sprayed and wiped down before an after.

By then, the daily 4:00 PM COOP meetings were by phone and had evolved to a Pandemic Task Force. Not to mention the unexplained absences that were whispered about, with one of our number hospitalized for a few days.

Okay, so we all know the rest. The P-word, pandemic, my beloved New York City a raging inferno of sickness and death. All of us at home, locked-down, trying to work and keep our souls together as the sirens punctuated our days and nights as so many desperate cries of despair.

On my chat groups, the friends groups and family ones, we consoled each as we raged, fearfully counting our numbers to keep us safe, and so filled with dread at the thought that one of us would become ill, while recounting in hushed tones those who had died … and on and on through political upheaval, Black Live Matter rallies and marches; the continued, unrelenting sickness, and all the rest.

A day shy of 23 months from placing my first mask order, I tested positive for Covid-19 on an Abbott BinexNOW home test.

That was 23 months of anxiety, fear, desperately scrambling for vaccinations for me and Jed, more scrambling for booster shots, online purchases of masks and more masks, of gloves and more gloves, of hand sanitizer, even making my own at one point with alcohol prep and aloe vera, Clorox bleach spray, Lysol and equivalent wipes, and all the other measures to keep the plague of illness, societal disorder, and wrenching fear at bay.

I was so shocked by the positive result on the stark card, I took it again. A sustained moment of cognitive dissonance. Me, positive? I’m the sanitizer “Queen.” I’m the masked-lady in blue and green and the colors of this or that masks, the cloth ones neatly washed and filtered and replaced with a regularity that was practically obsessive-compulsive in its features. There were weeks and weeks and weeks where I’d be the only person in a mask. On the streets in the summer of 2021 when we NYC denizens felt a bit of hope. Me in the gym, keeping to my quiet corners, learning how to work out and breathe through a mask in the heat, sometimes replacing mid-stream because I’d sweat through it.

Yes. That me. Now sneezing. Taking to my daughter’s room to isolate. The months of thoughtful prep suddenly crashing through with phone calls and frantic cleaning of surfaces, and setting up of supplies in what would be my isolation tank for ten days.

My angel, Izzi, came the next day to take over caregiving duties for her father and to keep me in soup and oatmeal. By that first day (so counted because the day of testing positive is day zero), I was already feeling sick. Sneezing gave way to a sore throat, and by day two a cough, night time fevers, nausea, and a crushing headache. That didn’t abate for several days and at one point I even needed an inhaler in addition to some migraine tablets for the headache, and steady doses of Mucinex to keep the coughing at bay.

My internist had said since I’d had three jabs it was highly unlikely that I’d need hospitalization or even anti-virals as long as my fever didn’t spike past 102F degrees or my pulse oximeter readings did not go below 92.

In that I was lucky. I’d become ill with the Omicron-variant raging across the world as a wild fire of sudden illness.

My fever never went above 100F, and my infection stayed in my upper respiratory system which meant my breathes ranged from a healthy 95-99 most of the time.

But I was sick. And now at day 12 still have sniffles and the sense that science and a steady dose of exercise saw me through the worst.

Our stringent protocols also kept Jed and Izzi safe as they continue to test negative.

Talking via FaceTime from the room next door.

Jed’s confusion as to where I was and who we all were patiently explained several times a day.

Bullets to our hearts averted.

Still …