Ease Up and Pull Back
When I arrived home from the clinic, I washed my hands, un-masked, and then poured a hot bath. Reaching for a bag of Epsom salts, I let out a sigh of relief I could still pick up their lavender scent. Turning off the bath water, I knew what I had to do next before crawling in.
Reaching for my phone, I thought back on the last two weeks and everyone who I had come in close contact with. Oh me oh my! How I longed, at that moment, when coming down with the common cold or flu was still very much a private affair. When a person could simply cancel their plans for the week, without fear they had infected the entire world with a potentially fatal virus.
Fortunately, if fortune has anything to do with this, I managed in recent weeks to keep my close contacts low. (However, come to think of it, there was that one night I let my guard down for a hot second after being swept away by a bottle of rosé. Darn it! Two more names to add to the list plus one stabbing pain of regret.) Recognizing this was no time for drama, I kept the messages brief and to the point, “I have a fever and just got tested for COVID-19, again. I will let you know as soon as I get the results back. This is no time for drama.”
Disrobing, I stepped into the bathtub and felt too exhausted to cycle through my usual anxiety-ridden round of what-ifs. It is curious, or maybe not so curious at all; but as soon as the body takes over the wheel, the anxious mind is forced into the backseat. With no energy available to panic, or vices left to fall back on, it is left with no choice but to enter a submissive state of calm.
32 hours after being tested for COVID-19, I got my result back: negative. As it turned out, I had indeed come down with the flu, just not the strain breaking headlines. In the week that followed, I ran a high fever for the better part of five days before it finally broke. During that time, I learned that: Advil and Tylenol can be taken in high doses together, The Good Wife is just as relevant years later, and hot baths are not advisable when you are already burning up inside.
“Even though my test result came back negative, I knew I was not off the hook yet.”
Even though my test result came back negative, I knew I was not off the hook yet. Unless I started to work at managing my stress level and taking better care of myself, I was going to end up right back where I started. And so, returning to the outside world, I stocked my fridge full of fruits, vegetables, and non-alcoholic beer. No more red wine for breakfast.
For the next month, I took a break from the news, alcohol and staying up late. For the first time in years, I watched the sunrise, having gone to sleep first. In the early morning hours, I caught up on a stack of books teetering beside my bed. In the afternoon, I stretched my way into a yoga class with a handsome man on YouTube. “Namaste, oh hey!” At night, I worked on my website and then turned out the light.
While my ego would like nothing more than to write, “The End,” who I am kidding? We still have a way to go. Since feeling better and easing the restrictions upon myself in the last month, I have started to slide. At the time of this writing, my fridge is filled with take-out boxes and my recycling bin, empty bottles of red wine. And so now I must pull back again. It seems that will be the way of life for the next while, ease up and pull back.
