Nature abhors a confident person.
I truly thought that both my husband, Olof, and I were immune to COVID, having managed to escape this affliction in spite of many, many up-close-and-personal exposures.
I was even contemplating volunteering us for one of those studies for people who had not contracted it, such was our seeming Teflon protection against this scourge. We were feeling downright smug.
Since the pandemic took hold in March 2020, I have been used to getting calls from people who I’d just seen in the past few days who would announce, “You’re not going to believe this!”
“Oh,” I’d say. “You have COVID.”
And they’d say, “Huh? How did you know?”
And I’d say, “Because I get this call at least once a week.”
Of the 25 of us who regularly descend on my younger son’s home in L.A. at Christmas, Olof and I were the only ones who had not had COVID, despite my sitting on the living room couch for an entire afternoon next to my daughter-in-law’s parents, who the next day tested positive for COVID.
At Thanksgiving the month before, I’d been leaning in to my friend’s daughter for several hours as we chatted through a lengthy meal in a closed-in environment. Two days later, she was diagnosed with COVID. Ditto a holiday dinner with some neighbors.
There were people who would insist that Olof and I had COVID and just not realized it. But every time we were exposed, I tested diligently for a least a week after. No symptoms, negative test. This would have had to have been the most subclinical case of COVID in the history of virology.
At first I was assuming that all those shots we were getting must be having a protective effect. Olof and I had all seven COVID vaccines and boosters recommended for seniors, not to mention an RSV shot, two shingles, one pneumonia and a flu shot. Honestly, it was a miracle we could even raise our arms.
But all the friends who ultimately ended up contracting COVID had all those shots, too.
We did have our personal theory about our immunity: The rest of those people just don’t drink enough. Olof, especially, was convinced of the microbially protective effects of a Scotch (or two), which he ingests strictly for medicinal purposes on a nightly basis. And it worked! No COVID!
I am not a Scotch drinker but have been known to imbibe medically therapeutic doses of white wine, also on pretty much a nightly basis.
Frankly, I’d stopped even worrying about COVID. So imagine my astonishment when I woke up one morning with a sore throat and the routine just-in-case COVID test I took came up positive. How could this be?
Ironically, I’m almost sure I contracted COVID in a packed medical waiting room where I’d gone for a routine test that, ironically, came back normal. This waiting room was a super-spreader event if there ever was one. Forty people sitting shoulder to shoulder in a small space.
I couldn’t believe how sick I got and how fast. I had a fever of 101.5 and felt completely terrible. Within 24 hours, my throat felt like I was trying to swallow shards of glass. I honestly felt like I was choking to death.
After one of the worst nights I’ve ever spent, I texted a friend and asked him to take me to an ER. I would have called him except my throat was so swollen, I couldn’t speak.
You might wonder why my husband, Olof, couldn’t perform this duty. But two days after I tested positive, so did he. Definitely the downside of sharing air space with another person.
I wasn’t sure what, if anything, they could do for me in the ER. What I was really hoping for was a shot of morphine, istered as quickly as possible. What they did do, however, was give me a hefty dose of prednisone to reduce the swelling and inflammation in my throat. Wouldn’t help the COVID, obviously, and I still had a sore throat. But I didn’t feel like I was choking to death anymore.
And let me say a few words about the Barbey Family Emergency and Trauma Center in the Prebys Cardiovascular Institute at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla. This facility opened in 2016 and is orders of magnitude better than another (ahem) ER nearby that is always a guaranteed multi-hour, if not all-day, wait. At Barbey, I was treated and out the door in an hour.
Fortunately, Olof didn’t get nearly as sick as I did. But he continued to test positive for what seemed like forever. I began to fear we were going to cancel an entire summer’s social life.
I recognize now what we did wrong: We tempted the fates. We bragged that we had never had COVID.
Never do this. They hear you.
Inga’s lighthearted looks at life appear regularly in the La Jolla Light. Reach her at [email protected]. ♦
