COVID-19 Chronicles: Wish I Knew

Tomorrow will be four weeks with coronavirus, still waiting on test results, still no idea how long this thing is going to camp out inside my body

Wish I knew what was going to happen, still not out of the woods

A fair number of people get sent home from the hospital only to die of a heart attack or stroke or something, complications

Let’s just say I have no plans to go for a run or get on a bike any time soon

There are other things I wish I had known, though

Not the part about avoiding Virus Brunch and not getting sick, not that part

I think it was only a matter of time before we got it, don’t want to upset anyone but at this rate it’s only a matter of time before you get it, too

We could easily have picked it up on March 1 when our friend stopped by coughing off the cruise ship

If that hadn’t happened my hubby would have been exposed at work two weeks later

From the sound of it, one of our downstairs neighbors has it, lot of coughing down there, sounds like me, not sure if he knows

Anyway, it’s futile to do that kind of counterfactual “if only I hadn’t done X or Y, then I’d be safe”

I don’t believe in safety, I believe in preparedness and grit

As far as counterfactuals I’m just glad that if this had to happen, it didn’t happen in other years of my life, such as 1981 or 1999, or before we moved to our nice new apartment

I’m thinking more about the information we DID have, and the preparations we DID make

I started writing about the pandemic early on, saying we had prepped for it back on March 3

That is true, in fact we already had our stuff by then

It is extremely interesting to me to analyze these types of decisions in retrospect

For instance, we’ve downsized several times over the years, and I feel validated in our decision to get rid of all our CDs and DVDs, as one example; streaming went mainstream a few years later, good call

How did we prep for this pandemic?

Made sure we were “stocked up” on groceries, 30 days’ worth of freeze-dried foods, shampoo, body wash, toothpaste, hand soap, laundry soap, dishwasher detergent, bird food

I had planned to start taking out cash in small bills each time we went to the store, fill up cash envelope, ran out of time

Wrong on both counts

Also did not anticipate cracking my phone screen AND breaking my iPad

Turns out people prefer contactless payment right now, lack of cash has not been an issue at all, that would be more of a power failure/internet outage issue

(Earthquakes, mudslides, wildfire etc)

We drastically underestimated how long the stay-at-home order would last

We’ve been able to keep ourselves fed but we did run out of hand soap, laundry soap, dishwasher detergent, toothpaste, dental floss

And more importantly

The Tylenol, Mucinex, and special vitamins I’ve been living off

In my mind a month was a really long time to be in isolation

I myself have been ill that long

I didn’t count on either of us ACTUALLY GETTING SICK

Derp

The other thing about pandemics is, it could have been anything

There could have been other symptoms that would want different types of meds, such as a nasty skin rash

We had it on the agenda to restock our first aid kit, that was literally up for the next week, then hubby got bronchitis and we put it off

This is all worth saying for what is probably not an obvious reason, but should be

Just because one crisis is happening does not prevent more crises from happening

We’ve had a couple of earthquakes and were lucky we only felt one, if we had a 7.0 for example that would have made things complicated

Not in fire season yet but a few months from now this whole quarantine thing could get mighty awkward, evacuation and social isolation are opposites

Another thing, this is dumb, low priority, but we’re running low on books

More accurately, my hubby is, he’s not an e-reader

I bought him several for New Year and his birthday, enough to make him laugh

He has maybe 500 pages left all told

The indie bookstore in our area is doing curbside pickup, that’s something, but I guess an anti-minimalist argument could be made to have a sizable to-be-read stack

Seems unreasonable to put delivery people in danger just for recreation and entertainment, I feel bad enough even asking for medicine

We can give ourselves credit for getting certain things right, either on purpose or by accident

It helped to go into it debt-free, not to brag but we did cut our expenses to the bone and do radical downsizing for several years, most married couples simply would not have been willing

Very grateful to Past Me for working so hard to lose weight and get fit, there were several times I know I would have collapsed from dizziness but my strong legs held me up

Not sure obese past self would have made it, especially after taking months to recover from respiratory infection, coughed up blood, on inhaler etc, do not recommend

Past Me set up whole body donation ten years ago, also advance care directive, rethinking part about ventilator now, not necessarily changing but rethinking

In some ways we were prepared, hubby’s bike got stolen (2nd time) and he managed to buy a new one almost immediately before pandemic hit, I had complete tune-up on mine previous year

Shower drain quit working, got it fixed, again, almost immediately before lockdown

Also feel very lucky I was able to get my surgery done before all this, and our poor doggy, what if we had needed to have him put down and the vet was closed?? If he’d hung on another month it would have been rough

This is part of how we find resilience and mental toughness, when we realize, things really could have been worse

Not that things are great, just that they could be more complicated

This is part of possibility thinking, part of strategic planning, includes risks and worst outcomes

Knowing already we were less prepared than we thought we were, in one sense don’t regret the time or expense, guess what, not paranoid after all, did not overdo a single thing

In another sense, can we even imagine what the next year will be like

Remember we make that happen through our intentions, words, and actions