Today is Monday the 10th. So last Wednesday night (the 5th) it felt a little funny in my chest. I thought I might be coming down with something. I woke up Thursday nauseous with dry heaves. I even teleworked in the morning and took the afternoon sick. Eventually I was just out of it. It became hell. The fever wasn’t high (less than 101F) but I wonder if I was even reading it right. I was in a delirious state. Waking up at one point I thought it was the next day. I noticed on Friday morning from my daily pill box that I had already taken Friday's meds.
It felt like my body was encircled by some electric charge and was just trying to survive. He was ready to have me go to Emergency Room. My screaming out scared Matthew, who had come in the bedroom to check on me. Probably should have sent me to the ER. If it were me watching someone else in that state I would have too. I don’t think my wife ever realized what state I was in. I had crawled into bed in the middle of the day and time seemed to vanish.
I felt better on Friday morning but someone suggested I check for Covid. I had my wife pick up a test kit and sure enough I tested positive. I called my doctor and we set up a telehealth visit as they call it. He asked about my temperature (which was oscillating between normal and 101F), looked over my recent blood test on file, asked when I felt it come on, and prescribed Paxlovid. Doctor said I should quarantine through Tuesday. I still had recurring chills but after the first dose of Paxlovid that night I started to feel better. There was no fever on Saturday, Sunday, nor today, but a general weakness.
Today even the nasal congestion seems to have let up. I feel pretty well. I happen to speak to a nurse today—about something else actually—and she said that today the flu might be harsher than Covid. Hmm, I would agree except for what I experienced on Thursday afternoon. When I spoke to the doctor on Friday, he seemed surprised this was my first time getting Covid. Is it that common that everyone gets it now?
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The story has more to it than my experience. My wife had been sick before me and was still coughing and occasionally feeling run down. I told her she should check herself for Covid, so she got herself a test kit and also tested positive. So this was beginning to make sense. Her mother has been in a nursing home for over a month and a half. More on that below. But the floor of my mother-in-law’s room had a Covid outbreak last week, and still does. My mother-in-law didn’t get Covid but my wife must have picked it up in one of her daily visits. Nursing homes are just germ magnets, depositories, and dispensaries.
My wife’s symptoms were nothing as severe as mine, though hers seem to be lasting longer, probably because she has not been prescribed Paxlovid. This makes me wonder why my body reacted so to the Covid initially. It reminds me of my first reaction to the Covid-19 vaccine which I detailed here several years ago. That post was titled, “Knocked on My Butt By the Vaccine.” Perhaps I’m more reactive to Covid than others.
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My mother-in-law fell at the beginning of the December. She fractured her skull, had a brain bleed, they resolved the bleed, but that developed into blood clots, blood clots got into her lungs which nearly killed her, but they resolved that. You can see I've honed that story down to its bare elements from frequent retelling. She was three weeks in the ICU. The day before Christmas Eve she was discharged to a nursing home, and she's been there since. As you can imagine, this was pretty challenging, especially for my wife, and it still is.
As it happens, the nursing/rehab facility is very close to our house. It's less than a mile. We go back and forth regularly. The first time she seemed out of it but in time her brain seemed to be getting sharper. Initially she responded very slow and deliberately but now seems to have total comprehension. It took her a while to get up out of bed. There was nothing physically wrong with her body but perhaps atrophy from being in bed so long. After a good month of rehab now she has been able to walk up and down the floor with a walker and a cane, go up and down stairs, and fully function as a solitary person. Today we even got the great news she will be discharged from rehab facility at the end of next week.
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So let’s end with a song that came to mind as I reflected on my Thursday afternoon delirium. It’s a song that came off the Rolling Stones’ album that came out last year, “Sweet Sounds of Heaven” of the album Hackney Diamonds. Many of you know I’m a big Rolling Stones fan, and, while I would agree their later years have been of mixed quality, this album is a glorious return to what I think is just short of their all time great ones. I highly recommend Hackney Diamonds and perhaps one day I’ll have a post on it.
For
now I’m going to highlight “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” a gospel tune that is
uncharacteristically Christian in outlook for the Stones. Featured on the record are Lady Gaga (vocals),
Stevie Wonder (piano and organ), and saxophonist James King. Wow is not nearly expressive enough. Here’s the song first, but then I’ll explain
why this song came to mind after.
Here
are most of the lyrics as well.
Sweet
Sounds of Heaven
(Jagger/Richards)
I hear the sweet, sweet
sounds of Heaven
Fallin' down, fallin'
down to this Earth
I hear the sweet,
sweetest sounds of Heaven
Driftin' down, driftin'
down to this Earth
Bless the father, bless
the son
Hear the sound of the
drums
As it echoes through the
valley
And it bursts, yeah
Let no woman or child
Go hungry tonight
Please protect us from
the pain
And the hurt, yeah
I smell the sweet scents,
sweet
Sweet scents of Heaven,
Heaven
Tumblin' down, tumblin'
down
Tumblin' down to the
Earth (Oh)
I hear the sweet sounds,
sweet sounds
The sweet sounds, ooh,
the sweet sounds of children
And they're praisin',
praisin'
The land of their birth
(No)
No, I'm not, not goin' to
Hell
In some dusty motel
And I'm not, not goin'
down
In the dirt (Yes, yes,
yes)
I'm gonna laugh, I'm
gonna laugh, I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna cry
Eat the bread, drink the
wine
'Cause I'm finally,
finally quenchin'
My thirst, yeah
You can't have a light
without a little shadow, yeah
Always need a target for
your bow and arrow
I want to be drenched in
the rain of your heavenly love
Oh, yeah, c'mon (Oh)
Let the music, let the
music play loud, play loud
Let it burst, let it
burst through the clouds, through the clouds
And we all feel the heat
Of the sun, yeah
Yeah, let us sing, let us
shout, let us shout
Let us all stand up proud
Let the old still believe
That they're young, yeah
Sweet, sweet sound
Sounds so sweet, oh, so
sweet
Sounds so sweet, so sweet
Heaven, Heaven
Down
Fallin' down, fallin'
down
To this Earth
That’s pretty religious for Mick Jagger. You know he supposedly had converted to Catholicism for his first wife, though he’s never spoken about any religious upbringing, so I doubt it was much.
So why am I reminded of this song? Well, lying in bed in a delirious state felt so isolating, so other worldly that it felt the end was a possibility. The verses, “No, I'm not, not goin' to Hell/In some dusty motel/And I'm not, not goin' down/In the dirt” resonate. If you’ve ever been a way alone (business trips for me) in some crappy hotel, the isolation feels overwhelming with perhaps a sense that if I died here no one would really know. It’s actually a horrible feeling that I’ve had more than once. Perhaps in that delirious state, eyes half open in a darkened bedroom, alone and feeling almost out of body, might be as close to a premonition of death as one gets. At least as I’ve gotten.
But
then the sweet grace, the sweet sounds, the sweet sense of heaven came down and
revived me. Thank you Lord.
Edit: It's unclear whether Mick Jagger converted to Catholicism or even had a need to convert. From what I found on the internet, Mick Jagger's father, Basil Fanshawe “Joe” Jagger, had a Catholic funeral. There are places that claim Mick was raised Catholic. Still I doubt religion was a big part of his upbringing.
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