In January of this year, (2021) at around 3am or so, lying in bed about as alone as can be and in an incredible amount of pain, a voice spoke in my ear as I struggled to sleep. “It’s not what you think... you are dying.” said the calm voice uttering the most frightening thing anyone has ever said to me. At the end of that sentence, I woke up looking around quickly to see who was there, only to find no one. This same thing happened two more times, so on the third time someone whispered in my ear, I attempted to sit up only to be held down by the pain shooting through my body.
There was no way I could reach my phone on my desk, so I called out to my google smart speaker to call my wife, (she was sleeping in the living room because I was quarantined in our room with covid.) When she answered I told her I needed to go to emergency immediately, which brought both her and my daughter into the bedroom to help me up.
This was the beginning of the worst part of having Covid 19, which attacked me unexpectedly in mid-November. The short version of this story is that I was hospitalized for a “Saddle Pulmonary Embolism” which was just hours away from taking my life if I hadn’t responded to the voice in my ear.
It doesn’t matter who’s voice I heard, that’s not the point I’m diving into just now. If you are a person of faith, then you know as I do that it was the Holy Spirit of God waking me up to save my life. If you are not a person of faith, you can attach whatever answer to the question of “who” that makes you satisfied.
The point that I am working my way to, is that Covid 19 nearly cost me my life, and as of the writing of this piece, I’m still struggling with “long Covid” symptoms which have aged me physically (I estimate by my lack of physical ability) about fifteen years (56 + 15). I can only do one or two “things” a day. Meaning, If I clean the kitchen and fix myself a small breakfast, I’m done. If I walk the block to our mailbox cluster (we live in a townhome type neighborhood), and back home, I’ll pay for that spent energy with pain accompanied by physical exhaustion. I am instructed by my doctor to take that walk as often as I can, to help keep my blood circulation going and not get any more blood clots, but it costs me the same every time, meaning after weeks of this my situation still has not improved.
Keeping all this in mind, along with the fact that my attorney believes I will be successful in being granted permanent disability from the Federal Government because of my condition, I can only wonder and shake my head at all the controversy, all the confusion that I see daily about being vaccinated and wearing masks.
I live in constant fear of being infected again, so I am vaccinated, and I keep masks with me no matter where I go or what I’m doing. I shy away from large crowds, meaning that if I go to Walmart (which I absolutely HATE because I get totally winded every single time) and I walk in to find the store crowded with too many people, I will turn around and leave. The hot sauce can wait.
Politics have ruined common sense it seems. People are literally, physically fighting over wearing masks, which is such a minor thing that helps protect all of us. The confusion over being vaccinated has more merit I think. I can understand people being hesitant about the vaccines, mostly because of the speed at which they were developed.
The thing is, however, if we were at this point (November 2021) still waiting on vaccines, people would be crying or fussing about how long it has taken, and probably saying things like “I can’t understand why they don’t have a cure yet” because of modern technology which can usually come up with answers quickly. So why not the vaccines?
The people who are stuck in the past worried about conspiracy (like the Tuskegee Experiment) need only consider that this is not a racial issue, where we are being used as test subjects. Rich people of every race (at the beginning of the vaccinations) were lying & cheating to get theirs, as well as trying to buy their way to the front of every line.
That very thought is why I decided to go forward with my decision to be vaccinated. Covid beat the crap out of me and then left me on the side of a road somewhere. I can’t go through that again. I am aware that I can still catch it again, but if the vacc can help me ease through it versus what happened around this time last year, I’ll take the vaccine. (*Side note: I was sick from Mid-November until mid-February with Covid19. The SPE hit in Mid-January)
I just hope that people will come to their senses about the Pandemic because as far as things have progressed, the unfortunate truth is that Covid 19 is likely here to stay and we are going to have to learn to live with it. So on that thought, I can only hope that politics can be pushed out of this so we can all work together to save and support each other before too many of us lose people we love to this bug.
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