On My Diagnosis with COVID-19 and This Disaster of a Month

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Hello friends and family, so much to say, so I have no particular order to this. I apologize.

How September Went

I couldn’t believe that a sinus attack from under an overhead fan on 9/5 would lead me to be stuck in bed so much for the next month. I couldn’t believe that it would lead me to being so hard to breathe beyond shallow breaths when I stand up, thanks to what I thought was just fluid build up in my chest (Tree of Life Healthcare helped with azithromycin, which helped Quite a bit). I couldn’t believe that, on the night RBG died, my making the mistake of sitting up (or laying on one side) the wrong way in bed would twist my Left shoulder and rib cage so bad I could barely breathe in bed without pain, erasing any gains I had made. That sent me to the inevitable (likely expensive) Emergency room visit at Piedmont on Sunday 9/20, an x-ray of my chest and at least six different neddle stickings, where they stated 1) I was COVID-negative (again yay) 2) I was running an internal fever (maybe because I was in a heavy jacket in a hot car, but that wasn’t even caught when I walked in front of the waiting room fever thermometer), 3) I didn’t have pneumonia but I was close to it because of the fluid build up from all the muscle coughing of the phlegm (Whoops) 4) I have bronchitis (damn).

So Tylenol greatly helped with the shoulder (the ribcage, at least until 9/22, stopped being an issue), and I was switched to Medrol to clear up the bronchitis (and post-nasal drip?), and I was on Zyrtec and Flonase for the sinus. Still coughing sometimes, breathing hard when I stand up.

The election news was part of my waking fever dreams in bed as I fought this back and shoulder pain. I did not sleep even a bit, and Sunday night was only a bit more restful because I was sweating bullets the whole time. Hopefully tonight is better.

But I teared up this afternoon when thinking about everything – the sinus attack, the cowardly unsuccessful drive-by shooting on our building, the deaths from COVID-19 hitting the families of people I know, the death of RBG. So many people have it worse than me, than us, and I don’t deserve the help I’ve received. I should’ve gone earlier to the ER, but I felt like I could sleep this off, and surprise surprise, it did not help.

I sincerely felt like that weekend was a good moment to give up on life, to just F off and die. I was not good with this pain, and not with this news, and not with this future. Mom and RJ and everyone who donated anything to me pulled me though this. I did not want to go to the Emergency room because of the expense. The doctor at Tree of Life and Pops both said to go, even as I literally grasped to the sheets and fought the urge.

(I really don’t know if it helped or was more depressing that the assistant who processed the prescription after they had finished with me said that she herself is on the hook for $1500. This is also the first time I’ve been in Piedmont’s Emergency Room since Connie died there in 2013, and I’m surprised that it didn’t mess me up like I feared it would.)

But then I spent a week of forcing the blood sputum out onto tissue, but finding it difficult to breathe when standing up or walking around, the pain had moved significantly from my left shoulder and ribcage to my right chest and right shoulder blade.

So Mom was worried that the Medrol and Tylenol wasn’t helping me enough, and the next Sunday she took me again to Piedmont North Columbus for a second opinion. They performed a CT scan for a blood clot on my lungs, and to see if it may be COVID-19.

Aftermath

And that’s how I have been diagnosed with COVID-19. I have also been diagnosed with “moderate” (in the view of St Francis-Emory) blood clots on my lungs resulting from COVID-19. I was ambulanced to St Francis that night, and I underwent a battery of IV injections (two of which were azithromycin IVs in which the IV “needle” was blown after 24 hours of usage, and the skin was burning and reddening). Heparin and azatacam IVs, pills of decadron and vitamins later, and I was finally released on Wednesday to a new, maybe reduced lifespan.

I am scared for my life, for my Mom’s life, for my nephew’s life. Since May 17, I did the most to stay at home – I have no car – and to stay away from people, but somehow I caught it early in September and it may have done a number to my lungs. Did someone bring it to Mom’s church? Did my nephew get it from CSU or his friends? Did it get it from Columbus Police when they were questioning me about that shooting, since CPD OFFICERS NEVER WEAR A MASK?And what about my life after this?

From so many posts I’ve read on Twitter, people test positive, then quarantine themselves for two weeks or so, then get released when they stop exhibiting the symptoms for another two weeks, and are classified as “recovered”. But then so many of those who are listed this way come back with blood clots and strokes out the wazoo, ending up in ICU and often dying or having amputations from COVID-caused clotting all over their bodies.I don’t know how significant it is that they caught the COVID while I was already clotting. I was weeks into feeling lightheaded when standing up and walking when they caught it on Sunday.

So I’m facing not only the likelihood that I’ll be taking blood thinners such as this expensive Eliquis for $500 that they want me on for at least the next 3 months for observation, but also the likelihood of long-haul COVID complications (like a stroke) for anywhere between the next year to the rest of my life, even after I test negative for the virus and the pandemic begins to fade, whenever that happens. This majorly sucks, but I also have some decisions to make about how I’m going to live my life after this. I can’t be sedentary like I have been since May, because pneumonia may very well set in, and will have to be outside a lot more, while at the same time I’ll have to be careful about any accident I make, such as biting my tongue or lips while eating. I need a 9-5 job. I need health insurance and Medicaid. I need help, but so do so many people. I think of Demetrius and how this hit his family so bad.

I don’t know what this is going to do to me. I admit to having suicidal thoughts in the past because of some mistakes in decision-making. Now that this catastrophe has happened to me, I have thought about going the disgraced Korean politicians’ route and simply dying in the woods away from everyone.

But seeing so much pain and death and destruction this year, the sound of people screaming in pain in the waiting room and throwing up buckets of blood while I was coughing up mere clots of blood in my sputum in another room, and now worrying about my Mom and nephew (even though they both have Tricare), I guess have to fight this now, no matter what happens in the election and afterward.

I’m hovering above hell, and I’m divided on whether I want to fall and give up. But so are so many people right now. So many are hurting right now, and we’re not the only ones out here wondering what will happen to us, or to this species.I read that Joe Biden mentioned at the first (shitshow of a) debate that 1/1000 African Americans have died from this disease (and he was right). How do you put that back together? We’re already punching above our brokenness as a community. We didn’t fucking need this disease.

Yes, we have an even more fucked-up election season than 2016, and we have so many people who are in power who want to screw their fellow citizens out of their civil rights by any means (un)necessary and flagrant (if they can’t kill them outright). Yes, RBG is dead, SCOTUS might as well be dead to us, Democrats are fighting their damnedest for more than a 50-50 Senate and keeping Warnock in a January runoff while trying to protect the franchise across all 50 states. And our hopes to save the ACA, legal abortion, LGBT rights, the VRA and so many other rights now hinge more on winning the other two branches in one month from now and holding on to them for more than a 2-year interim. Easy peasy.

But we are once again wondering whether the fires out west, or the fires and warming out in Siberia which fit the modus operandi of their fucked-up president, or the fires in the Amazon and the Pantanal which are encouraged by Brazil’s fucked-up president, are the ending of the species as much as COVID-19. So many of those houses, undoubtedly, shouldn’t have been (or shouldn’t have had to have been) placed within or near combustible forest areas.

And we are wondering when we as a country will fess up to the fucked-up, inhumane way we built our cities and municipal governments, from how the police are built (incl. What they were built for, the hardware they demand for their share of the city budget, the lack of investment into other sectors which could prevent or mitigate crime before it happens like adequate housing, healthcare, food, etc.) to how city governments are elected and structured, to how they build cities in zones to keep single-family homes away from the multi-family housing and taking up the vast majority of land, all of which are destructive to the indigenous, to working class, to health, to the environment, to affordability.

Where am I in all of this? What can I do in all of this?

Because these fights will last after the election. These fights will last beyond the next 2 years.And I wonder whether I want to stay on and fight – or even to be a part of the network of solutions to seek a new status quo after this fight is resolved. Or do I want to slow my pace and pick my fights. But numerous people in their own situations reached out to me with donations to help us pay rent and electric this month, and I’m reaching out to them privately. If I can’t get your name on Facebook please PM me. I didn’t expect that this would happen to me despite my best efforts over the last 4 months to stay away from everyone. But so many of you donated to help us stay above water. Thank you so much.

And some advice for when you get treated: if the IV has been in the same spot for over 24 hours, don’t let the nurses use that same IV to inject azithromycin, because no matter the speed of the injection it will burn and redden like hell. Tell them to take the needle out first and find another vein to inject azithromycin, and it will not be an hours-long pain afterward.

This will haunt me for the rest of my life. And despite everything that is happening to this species (and planet), I want to live a long life, into my old age, and fight this shit. I want to recover. I feel like I’ve been robbed.I also wonder whether this treatment will convince me to become religious again, like, progressive religious. Or it may commit me to be even more humanist.

But most of all, this is forcing me to take time more seriously. This is putting me on edge. I’m more irritable and angry that this is how I will spend the rest of my life, running from this fucking disease when so many are trying to do the same thing at this exact moment.

And will I survive my 30’s?

Will I survive whatever will happen in October? November? January? Should I volunteer for the vaccine and chance my life?

I am wondering whether anywhere is safe in this world to live, or will be safe to live even after a vaccine is found and distributed to the masses.

You see? I’m now swinging between despair over myself and resolve for those outside of myself. I may go crazy because of this.

Anyway, this will continue to be a struggle. My links are below:

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