[Due to my website being offline while it was being redesigned, this update was previously posted only on Substack and Facebook.]

Thank you to everyone who responded with your Covid stories. I’m sorry you suffered, and for those still suffering, and I’m also comforted by our shared experience. Gratitude and hugs to you all.

Days 8 – 11 April 27-30

I started wondering if my fatigue was just from Covid or also from lying around so much. I started to do a bit more. Sat in a patch of sun and weeded a two-foot area. Walked slowly to my parents’ next door and surveyed their newly-weeded beds. I felt better and also still exhausted.

Day 9, I took a Covid test: negative. The next morning I went grocery shopping. I wore a mask. Five years into the pandemic, I still often wear a mask in crowded indoor situations. Today an unusually high number of people, employees and customers, are wearing masks. Is Covid surging again? 

Shopping is exhausting. So many foods remain unappealing. Once home, I eat a banana and nap for an hour.

Day 11, I probably did too much. I wish I could do this day over. Before Covid invaded my body, I was walking on the treadmill most mornings, 30-45 minutes, usually at a pace of three miles per hour, often on a steep incline. My body prefers to move. My body had had it with all this lying about. So I walk on a flat treadmill at one and half miles per hour for twenty minutes. It’s a gorgeous sunny day and I plant four peonies, wash out the litter box, put fresh sugar water in the hummingbird feeders and seed in the bird/squirrel feeders. I do a load of laundry. I take rest breaks during all of these tasks. I move slowly. Perhaps I did too much. Perhaps what happened next would have occurred even if I’d lain around all day.

Days 12 – 14 May 1-3

The plan for day 12: take my mother flower shopping and then plant those flowers in her three hanging baskets. We will drive together and both wear masks. That was the plan. That was how this day was going to go. Of course I’m concerned about keeping my parents safe. So first I re-test for the Covid virus. Result: positive. 

Disbelief. Sadness. Also, of course. I was extraordinarily tired last night. I woke up at 4 AM and had a rough couple of hours trying to get back to sleep. My throat is sore. My nose congested. No fever. But I’m weary. And for probably the first time during this illness, I feel despair sink into my gut. I was too busy last week being sick to attend to my emotional arc. Sure I was upset to have my life interrupted by a serious isolate-at-home virus. But there I was and the only thing to do was deal with it. Now with milder symptoms there is some bandwidth to feel. 

Enter despair. And the choice of what to do next. I choose to go outside.

It is a still, sunny morning. The greens of grass, moss, and trees are brilliant. My head feels better inhaling the moist air. I walk slowly. I let my feelings come. Denial—I was ready to get back to my previously scheduled life. Disappointment—I was looking forward to going flower shopping with my mom. Resignation—I’m still sick. Accept what is.

What is turns out to be forty-eight hours of a Covid rebound, all symptoms worsening, though not as bad as days one through four. 

I remind myself of Gertrude Stein’s admonishment: “The job of the artist is not to succumb to despair.” I lie in bed and pull my computer onto my lap.

Days 14 – ?

To be continued.