I came down with COVID19 over this 4th of July weekend. Lucky me. No, I hadn’t had it yet, and this is my first infection with the dreaded disease. After all the hype and worry, I felt prepared with five shots, one being the last Omnicron Booster. After my positive test, I immediately got a video conference with an emergency medical professional and got Paxlovid proscribed, because I’m high risk with my heart disease (and age, but I won’t tell you how old. Let’s say over 50). Needless to say, my 4th of July was a strange kind of celebration of life. I wasn’t so worried about dying, but more about surviving without contracting long-term COVID. There might have been a prayer or two that first night.

After a few days now with the Pax prescription finished and no new symptoms (yet), I’m feeling more confident and able to do things, like write, do dishes. My symptoms of cough and dripping nose have stopped for a few days, with the very ocassional dry cough. What I had trouble with a lot is the brain fog.

After surviving my heart attack and pneumonia at the end of 2014, I’ve had some short memory problems and fatigue issues. Other words, I had to watch how many “spoons” I used in a day. If you’ve heard of the spoons metaphor, measuring your daily energies in how many spoons you have, it’s the idea of using energy sparingly so you have enough to survive your day. So, I’m familiar with that concept already.

I’m doing that now at the end of my COVID19 infection, measuring my energy in spoons. Just taking it a day at a time, listening to my body for the amount of spoons it has for the day, and then planning accordingly. I have literally cleared my calendar for July to focus on COVID recovery. I just can’t push myself now. I’ve shut down my freelance writing too, to make sure that I am healthy enough to get back to that.

I also had a dear friend pass to the other side a few weeks ago. She had requested that I see her before, and I had to drop everything and travel up to where she was hospitalized because she only had days to live. Really. I think I feel I’ve been living “Steel Magnolias” or some other kind of movie the last several weeks. Add in that I’ve been healing an ankle that I broke back at the beginning of April, I just feel the universe is throwing some pretty crazy smackdowns that I keep smacking back at.

The irony of getting COVID19 after all that traveling up and back down the Pacific Northwest coast isn’t lost on me. I literally got COVID at home, from my husband, even though we masked and kept isolated. But my viral load was less. He did get a much worse case, likely because the guy sitting next to him on a plane for six hours didn’t cover his mouth once. Coughed the entire flight. So, hopefully, all those other people exposed are sensible and test for COVID, and don’t believe it’s just a flu.

Why tell you all this? Well, dear readers and fans, it is effecting my deadlines for upcoming projects, such as the sequel to “Never Date A Vampire”. I am working on it, but it isn’t progressing as fast as I’d like. But then, health does come first or there is no writing without good health, correct? So, the sequel, which is called “Never Trust A Vampire” may not come out before Halloween 2023. This year isn’t going the way I’ve planned. But when the universe throws you one heartache and illness, you just work on focusing on healing so all the other things can come after. That’s what I’m doing now.

Not to mention the brain fog from COVID19. It really does make it hard to think and work. But with some rest and attention to myself so I can heal, I’m confident I’ll be able to get back in the chair and write some more. I am working on the first draft and plotting the course of Cassandra right now, and it is taking place during the first part of the pandemic, approximately May 2020.

I mean, with getting COVID19 now, I definitely feel safer in healing myself through the situation than I would have in the beginning of the pandemic. But having had the fever, body aches, brain fog, swollen throat and chest tightness, and dry cough, I can say now that I relate so much with everyone that has had this disease and then pulls through. My adamant hope is that I remain symptom-free and don’t get any form of LONG COVID, and I have a true sympathy to all those fighting with COVID now, 3 years after it became part of our lives.

Just remember, it’s still out there, mask up in enclosed places like airplanes, please, especially if you have a cough. It will help so many people to stop the spread and still be aware it’s out there infecting people. That cough isn’t likely the flu, unless you take a test and check it isn’t COVID19. Yes. That’s how I caught it. A home test. So, keep those COVID19 tests around the house. Please, keep a mask in your pocket and hand sanitizer, because they protect those around you when you have those non-symptoms of COVID19 and are infectious to others. Take precautions. We still have to deal with this disease. It will help other high risk folks like myself from getting COVID19.

Take care, be safe,

-Marilyn