Presuming

March 18, 2020

A little over two weeks ago I was on a flight from Palm Springs to San Francisco.  Because Palm Springs is a small airport, the plane was also petite, maybe seating a hundred people in all.  

The flight attendant was gregarious.  She noisily put the mike down in the middle of her safety instructions, rolling her eyes, mumbling loud enough for the audio to pick up “No one is even looking at me, forget it”.  She was dry and obnoxious and I found myself liking her.

Towards the end of the flight, she suddenly appeared next to me offering her hand to shake.  Surprised, I took it.  “I’m thanking every person for flying with us today,” she said.  She reached across me and shook the hand of the eighty-year-old man beside me.  Then she continued towards the front, accosting every passenger.

I looked at my hand.  I knew that I had now effectively touched every person behind me.  I was in row C.  Don’t touch your face, I reminded myself again and again as we circled SFO.  But I did touch my book.  And my phone.  And eventually I forgot and itched my nose.  As soon as I got off the plane I found a bathroom and washed my hands.  But.

Exactly a week later I was hit with a strange headache in the middle of the afternoon.  I’m a headache expert; I grew up with migraines, if I’m at all dehydrated I feel it in my head first.  But this headache was different than any I’d ever had - sudden onset, a warping pain on and off.  And within an hour I felt a tightness in my chest.  Not trouble breathing, per say, just a constriction.  I didn’t have a fever but I was cold.

The next day was Monday, my day off.  I still felt strange and so I got in bed for most of the day, mostly just for fun.  I read and napped and by Tuesday morning I felt fine.  I generally have a kick-ass immune system - a day in bed usually cures me of just about anything.

I continued with my week, a week that was unusual because of the encroaching virus. I was focused on my shop and when and if I was going to have to temporarily close and how I was going to weather the loss of income.  Business, because of the strange times, was very slow, so I was mostly alone.  And every once in a while I’d feel the whisper of a scratchy throat, the tremor of chest restriction, the quick bloom of a headache.  

By Friday afternoon I had closed the shop and mostly sequestered myself to my family.  By Monday a shelter in place order had been called.  Early Monday morning I woke up to a resurging scratchiness and constriction in my throat, tight lungs, actually coughing.  And in that wee hour frame of mind I thought, shit, this is corona.  

I’ve done a ton of reading on this virus.  I know that typically patients take a turn for the worse in the second week.  Suddenly I wondered if this was my second week.  If this resurgence of mild symptoms, symptoms that had gone virtually completely underground for the last number of days, could be my worsening.

I wasn’t worried about getting terribly sick.  I’d weathered whatever this was up to this point.  So well I hadn’t believed myself to be ill.  But I was worried about my community.  The people to whom I could have possibly spread the virus and the fear that it was far more prevalent - and sneaky - then we had thought.

The symptoms had mostly ebbed by the morning.  I felt strange again in the afternoon and got in bed and napped.  Then I felt mostly fine again.

I called a doctor friend yesterday morning, Tuesday, a friend who has been on the front lines of the epidemic in Marin.  I said, hey, should I get tested?  I’m not worried about me so much but more for virus-tracking.  She listened to my symptoms.  She said, I think you have it.  Those are the symptoms I’m seeing in adults.  And, scarily, I’m seeing it a lot.  There are very few tests.  Heavily quarantine yourself and your family.  We can test you when tests are widely available - but at that point it will be to see if you’re immune.

And so I wait.  With everyone else I wait.  For it to get worse.  For it to get better.  Not my own state of health, that I’m pretty confident about.  For the health of our community, small and large.  This virus can be very quiet.  And I think for many people, most, it will be mild or even entirely invisible.  But for some, the elderly, the immunosuppressed, it will be fatal.  I can’t help but feel that this will change the landscape of our lives.