Yesterday, after hours in an emergency room bay, I was put in a holding area, hooked up to monitors and oxygen, and told I might be moved to a room later on in the evening.  It had been a long day and I was hungry, head-achy tired and still coughing but the day of oxygen cleared some of my brain and I felt a shift to giving into this process of being sick. 

My not-feeling-so-well of new year’s eve blossomed into just plain sick the next day. The seasonal cough that humidifiers and inhalers and gallons of water could not conquer shifted into something else — a dry hacking that would not stop.  The cough and chills and body aches and an exhaustion that drained every ounce of will power out of me.  

The beginning of January is probably a good time to be sick.  Julia’s activities, as well as mine, are on hold for the holidays. We had gotten through almost all of the seasonal visiting and partying. I was looking forward to a few days of lying low; however, not quite as low as I was laid. 

Ed took up the slack, cooking, urging me to hydrate, washing up and on the weekend taking Julia out to occupy her while I slept.  Sleep was all I could do but no amount of naps that revived me for short spurts of time or Niquil induced sleep did anything to put me on a road to feeling better.

So, yesterday, right after Julia was picked up by The Ride, I called my doc’s office for advice expecting that they would want to see me before prescribing some real cough meds because I still believed that if only I could stop coughing for a stretch of hours, I could get really, truly restful sleep and start healing.

The nurse listened to my litany of ills until I got to my blood oxygen level numbers. I knew they were low —under 90 for at least a day and dipping to 83 a few time. The nurse stopped her questions, asked if I knew if my finger fingertip Oximeter, blood oxygen saturation monitor, was working and then advised that I go immediately to the ER.

And so began a long day.

We got there before 9, registered and didn’t wait long before I was called back.  This was incredible because later in the day, Ed reported long lines of waiting patients and gurneys of patients being treated in the halls. For me, it was a tense, quiet day of waiting—tests, scans and x-rays, many vials of blood extracted and taken away, consultations with nurses, interns and docs.

And just waiting.

By midmorning I knew enough to arrange for Julia to go to her day center on Wednesday.  My email to the center and to DDS was quickly answered for which I was very grateful.  It took a few more hours before they decided I have a decent case of RSV and to admit me.  And then, more hours before they found a room.  I was wheeled out of the holding bay to a room after 10 pm, Transportation provided by a nice man who chatted as pushed the bed through darkened and very quiet halls and got us on and off an elevator, where one rather lost looking woman asked where the door to the parking garage was. At that moment, I thought how I have been her lost in the maze of big hospitals. Her very aliveness punctuated the quiet, I wondered what this place was like during the worst of the pandemic, if these halls were ever quiet, if someone from transport could ever casually chat while moving patients from one part of the hospital to another. I could imagine ghosts.

The nurses did not finish setting me up and doing a few more routine tests until almost midnight, at which point I just wanted to close my eyes. I did not sleep well or long, but I feel industrious enough this early morning to tap on this keyboard.  For which I am grateful.  And order breakfast which is like ordering take out now.

And so, we are a week into this year and while a world rushes forward I am taking a  slower route. A lot of allowing, giving up and giving into.  Grateful for Ed and Cheshire and the every valiant Julia. Grateful for the battery of people who brought me through yesterday and last night.  

Being sick is being alone, so much waiting, so much allowing and letting. I am filled with many ghosts and stories of illness past. Maybe I’ll recall a few later today or tomorrow but for now, I am emptied of words.  

Cheers to everyone!