I Got the Virus Instead.
It’s been a heckuva few weeks.
I spent weeks scouring the earth for a vaccine appointment – and got one. The night before I was scheduled to get that shot, I got a fever instead.
I tested positive for COVID. I got it through the air vents in my own home.
Then, just as I was starting to recover enough from COVID to stand up and walk around the bedroom, my mentally challenged sister-in-law fell. She called 9-1-1 and they took her to the hospital. Physically, she is 64 years old; mentally, she is eight. Bill spent the day talking to folks at the hospital so that she wouldn’t fall through the cracks and end up admitted.
She had arthritis. Eventually they sent her home.
I started feeling better the next day – and even better the day after that. I may have had COVID but my symptoms fairly suddenly vanished (except my sense of smell which still eludes me).
When I started feeling better, I started scouring the internet again for possible vaccinations. I filled out more forms, more requests for appointments. I waited and hoped and visited site after site, hoping. But there were – always – no appointments available.
I got the virus instead.
As soon as I got out of my bedroom, Bill and I got tested again for COVID. I thought this was necessary, but apparently it is not. Bill tested negative; he’s fully vaccinated now. I tested positive again; it was not a surprise. They said it could be 21 days before I test negative again, but I am not contagious.
Just when it was time to start celebrating, only a few days before my release from isolation, Bill awoke in the middle of the night in horrible pain. He did a virtual visit with his doctor, then did an ultrasound and discovered that he had an enormous kidney stone. The pain was unbearable and, three days later, almost constant.
They told him he would need surgery, but they wouldn’t tell him when he could have that surgery. I spent the day complaining to the office that he was in pain. They told me to go to the emergency room – who, of course, would tell him that he had a kidney stone and that he’d need surgery.
At 4:00 on a Friday, Bill finally got an appointment for that surgery. The first available surgery appointment is not for three weeks. And Bill is in so much pain that all he can do is moan, and take pain killers, and sleep, and then moan some more.
He has to wait three weeks. I can hardly speak about this, it makes me so angry. Apparently there are only a handful of urologists in this world, and there’s a pandemic. The combination means, basically, Bill waits forever.
So tomorrow, since Bill is out of commission, I am going to take over his daily plan. I will pick up my mentally challenged sister-in-law. My mission? To get her vaccinated. She’s got an appointment for her first shot tomorrow morning. So I get to go, and watch – once again so close to that elusive vaccine, but not able to get one.
And then I will come home and hop back on the internet and wait and hope some more. Because that is going to be my life until I get that shot – and until my kids get that shot – and until the 300 million Americans who are still waiting… get that shot.
I do see light at the end of the tunnel, but this is a very long tunnel.