Any Questions?

A dear family friend was in the hospital with COVID pneumonia a few weeks ago. We grew up together in Camarillo, and our families spent a lot of time together. He was as close to me as a brother could be, minus the stealing of Halloween candy and annoyingness of living in the same house together. (Sorry, Bruh. You are pretty cool as far as brothers go, but there’s always room for improvement. Don’t get jealous.)

I bet you have questions already. Was he old? Healthy? Pre-existing health conditions? These are questions that naturally come to mind, but what real Enquiring Minds want to know is: Am I susceptible? Humans have an organic need for explanations to understand a scenario. Asking questions is also a technique to control situations. Boy, couldn’t we all use a little more control these days?! The problem is that the path many of us take toward understanding or attempting to gain more control takes us off course and distracts from the truth. If we don’t start from a position of truth, we will never get to intelligent solutions.

My friend is about my age…..so…..YOUNG. And healthy. Well, he WAS healthy until a few weeks ago. He had been feeling pretty crummy with a lingering fever, so he knew it was probably COVID. Whatcha gonna do? Stay home, get tested, let your pals and coworkers know if they need to quarantine. He had no appetite and lost 20 pounds. (GUYS, amiright??) He had no cough.

Things got real over the course of a weekend. REAL bad. REAL fast. He didn’t FEEL like he had trouble breathing. Nothing like Dr. Dyson, the cybernetics expert in Terminator 2, who valiantly sacrificed himself in an effort to thwart Judgement Day. Nice try, Dr. D. If only 2020 were as simple as filmmakers imagined the future would be! Murderous adversaries made of mimetic polyalloy? Psh. So 1995.

My friend was hanging in there, hanging in there, hanging in there, but suddenly became breathless if he tried to hold a conversation. His sensible wife urged him to go to the emergency room just to be on the safe side. Upon arrival, his respiration rate was 2-3 times above normal, meaning that his body was fighting to get more oxygen. His arterial oxygen level….that measurement taken by clipping the little chomper to your fingertip….was at 92mm Hg, well below normal for a healthy adult. His chest x-ray showed double pneumonia.

He was put on a regimen of two antibiotics, steroids, zinc, vitamin C, a blood thinner, and intravenous fluids. He was also put on insulin because this infection, and probably his recent loss of appetite, caused his blood sugar to fluctuate out of control. He was watched closely and given some time for the treatment to kick in. If he didn’t improve in a half a day or so, he would be intubated.

How is he now? I hesitate to say. Why? Because I am just going to LOSE MY SHIT if I hear one more person say, “COVID is not as bad as people make it out to be. The death rate is only 1-2% and more people are surviving now.” I don’t want people using my friend as evidence of this callous statement. This is what a BUNCH of jerkwads had the nerve to say to my friend’s wife. I concede that this was their attempt at comforting, but it comes off as dismissive denial and made me feel like busting up a whole bunch of chops. These are the same people who used my friend as evidence that “masks don’t work,” because he diligently masked in public.

JUST NO. This isn’t how masks work. Michael Jackson got it all wrong. He wasn't so much protecting himself from the world; he was protecting the world from him. Probably should have gotten a better mask. But I digress...

And according to today’s statistic from the CDC, there have been 3,761,362 cases in the US and 140,157 deaths. That is a death rate of 3.7% according to my math. Since I am 100% Chinese, that math is guaranteed 100% legit.

My friend thankfully did not die. He has been released from the hospital and is quarantining at home. While this is definitely great news, I won’t be breathing a sigh of relief any time soon. He is no longer in the hospital, but make no mistake; he is still not well and is not out of the woods yet.

Another friend of mine fell very ill in March right at the beginning of shut down. She was never tested, because getting tested wasn’t a thing way back then….four months ago….unless you were in the hospital. But she was very, very ill for many weeks. Months later, she still has bouts of fever and exhaustion.

You have lots more questions, don’t you? Did THIS friend get tested? Lisa, you seem to have many friends who have gotten sick! Have YOU been tested?

Let’s get something cleared up. A positive test result is helpful in identifying treatment plans if you are sick. If you have a positive test result and are NOT sick…an asymptomatic carrier…this information is helpful so you know to quarantine and call everyone you’ve been in contact with. But a negative test result means practically nothing. You could be infected an hour after being tested. Or this could be a false negative like the Infamous Pregnancy False Negative of 1999.

Might you know this person? Might you have been in contact with him or his family members? Does he live in Oregon? All logical questions. You want to know whether you should worry. But these questions are also irrelevant. Just as debris from the Japanese tsunami found its way to the Oregon Coast in the span of a year, nature has a way of getting places. This tsunami debris didn’t even have people to help it travel the 5,000 miles across an ocean. Worry about COVID no matter where you live and who you know.

Being close to someone who got very sick from COVID brought to my attention some of the suffering that we don’t usually think about. Like HIV, COVID infection comes with a stigma stemming from fear, so a lot of families don’t talk about their experiences. Besides the obvious fear of losing your life or the life of a loved one, there’s also the difficulty of isolation. My friend was isolated in the hospital while his wife was quarantined at home with their two teenage boys tormented with worry. After my friend was released from the hospital, his wife was promoted to quarantine with two teenage boys AND a sick husband.

While my friend was in the hospital, his wife was tasked with notifying his staff, cancelling clients, and closing up the office. Loss of income added to the worry burden. After notifying the family’s recent contacts, she learned that most folks preferred not to get tested. It was too much trouble. They didn’t have time to quarantine anyhow. So they called and texted daily, hounding her for test results that she didn’t have. These bozos sapped her of an enormous amount of energy at a time she was already tapped.

This pandemic is revealing people’s true colors, and I’m really happy that my friend’s family experienced a lot of love and care as well. Friends checked in often, offering encouragement and prayers. Gifts of groceries, fresh produce from the farmer’s market, and food from the boys’ favorite restaurants actually made them feel spoiled.

Welp. Tuesday Fus-day got a little heavy this week. As sick as we all are of COVID, we have to keep talking about it in a way that is supportive and helpful. The way things seem to be heading, we aren't going to have COVID under control any time soon. The stigma and unusualness of this illness make it even more daunting, and it’s up to us to give the conversation some healthy, truthful, physically-distanced air.

Do you have first or secondhand experience with COVID? What did you learn that surprised you? Stay well, my friends! And thank you for reading!