So, You Got Covid. Now What?

Welcome to the club! There are over 11 million of us now! I’m sure there is a lot going through your mind. Did you get this from a co worker? Did you get this from having some rough sex? Did you hit the jackpot and get this from having rough sex with a co worker? However it happened, you have a ton going through your mind right now. If you are anything like me, these are your thoughts

Am I going to die?
Who did I get it from?
Who could I have given it to?
If I have to miss work, i’m never going to financially recover from this, Joe Exotic style.

Good news, my scared/curious friends, as someone who got Covid (and still had it after the election when idiots would have had you belief it was going to end), I’m here to guide you through everything you are about to experience. Let’s break down what you are about to go through over the next couple weeks.

AM I GOING TO DIE?

Maybe. I mean, i’m not trying to be a dick about this. In around 9 months, 265k people have died from this, and it’s not exactly a fun death. Here is what I went through.
Sunday-Find out a co worker has it, so I decide to get tested. I have no symptoms.
Monday-Get tested and test positive for Covid-19. Running a fever but otherwise feel fine. I actually felt well enough that I asked the doctor if I could come back at the end of the week and get tested again so I could minimize the amount of time i’d miss at work. It turns out you only get Covid for 72 hours in the NFL. Still though, I felt pretty good.
Tuesday-I feel like I might die. My body has become extremely dehydrated and every ounce of my body hurts in a way I haven’t felt since I got into my car accident 19 years ago. I go through coughing fits that hurt so aggressively bad that I feel like a Tremors monster is trying to tunnel out of my chest. My temperature is around 102, leading me think i’m on fire even as i’m shaking from the cold. I can’t sleep because i’m terrified i’m going to have to go to the hospital. My stomach is violently rejecting any food I try to put into my body. My body feels so dry that I have to run a humidifier in my room, leaving my bed sheets to feel damp, like i’m sleeping on bed sheets that didn’t get completely dried in the dryer. I’m sweating profusely. It feels like i’m in absolute hell. I can’t get out of bed or go to the bathroom without becoming incredibly winded. I’m completely run down and I wouldn’t wish this feeling on my worst enemies.
Wednesday-See Tuesday
Thursday-See Tuesday/Wednesday
Friday-Sweet relief. I still feel like shit but I’ve mainlined enough Gatorade that i’m probably no longer dehydrated. I can get up and move around a little bit without feeling like my body is about to crumble. Still coughing but it doesn’t hurt as bad. My fever breaks and I’m through the worst of it.
Saturday-Cough persists but I start to feel good again.
Sunday-I’m on my back porch feeling fine and watching football.

A lot of people had it worse than me, but I definitely spent days living in fear that I was going to have to be rushed to the emergency room. It made me come to terms with the fact that, even though I had no problem wearing a mask in stores, that I stopped doing things I loved like going to bars, going out to dinner, and comedy, I still hadn’t taken this virus seriously enough.

Yea, But You Weren’t Going to Die, The Virus Isn’t That Bad

Fuck off straight to hell with your bullshit. I didn’t like people who had this line of reasoning before I got sick, and now i’ve got a list of people in my head who deserve a baseball bat to the back of the head after I got it. If you took the virus seriously and still got it, then you have every right in the world to be mad. The entire state of Florida should be sunk to the bottom of the ocean, like White Trash Atlantis.

But if you didn’t take it seriously, then were shocked to find you ended up in a hospital bed, then just be fucking lucky Darwinism didn’t get you, because it should have.

I’ve Got Covid, But I Feel Okay, What Do I Do?

Well, if you are my friend Mongo, you eat an onion just to show how crazy it is you lost your ability to taste. For those of us who can’t afford extravagant things like onions, we have to turn our attention to other things to keep us occupied. The following things are acceptable to binge watch if you are sans onions.

The Queens Gambit-Your friends are right. This show is absolutely delightful. Seven episodes. It will fly by.

Old seasons of Fargo-So it looks like every season actually intertwines in some way. If you want to get lost in a combination of great television and television conspiracy theory rabbit holes, then this is the show for you.

The New Borat Movie-Yea, most of your friends hated it. But most of your friends also held candle light vigils when Taco Bell scrapped their value menu, so how much can you really trust their taste?

Superstore on Hulu or Peacock-I’ve never watched this show, and I don’t know a single person that has. Yet, the show is in season six, and has 99 episodes. Someone please watch it and let me know if it is good.

Listen to acoustic Chris Cornell songs on Youtube. Cornell died three years ago, but his acoustic covers of Patience and Nothing Compares 2 U are basically the sad anthems 2020 deserves.

Watch this and remember that Aretha Franklin is/was/always will be the queen.

The Social Dilemma on Netflix-If you weren’t furious about the dumb shit your family members posted on social media before…

Dark Side of the Ring on Hulu-Yes, it’s about wrestling, but all any of you want in life is drama filled television, and brother, let me tell you something: there is no greater drama than wrestling drama. The action on the show is scripted, but the real life stuff that goes on behind the scenes is better than any tv show.

Ok Brandon, I’ve Watched TV For Days and My Eyes Want to Bleed, What Do I Do Now?

Do you feel okay? Go take a walk. Seriously. If you’ve been through some shit, then wherever you are quarantining probably feels like a jail cell. You aren’t going to give the trees Covid, and even if trees can get Covid, fuck them. See all those leaves on your yard? Guess whose fault that is. Trees are like the world’s worst roommate. They are always just kind of there, making a mess of your yard and not cleaning up after themselves. Screw trees. Go on a walk. Kick an Oak Tree or something. It won’t affect the tree, but it will probably make you feel better, and that’s what is important.

If you don’t want to walk, then let me tell you something: sleep. Get it in, man. I slept a ton because there was nothing else to do. This is probably the most time you’ve had to just do nothing for an extended period of time since you graduated from school. Take it easy. Recharge your batteries. When I started to feel better, I felt incredible. I’d been sleeping a bunch, letting my brain reset. Letting my body reset. 2020 has been the most trying year any of us can remember and we are still going through it. Take this opportunity to just do nothing and give your mind, body, and soul time to rest.

My 2020 had fallen off a cliff so badly before I got sick, I was in therapy every week. I nearly got fired from my job. I was mentally done. I was in the worst head space i’d been existing in since a long time ago. Everything felt like it was falling apart around me and I had no way to pick up the pieces. I was having constant panic attacks that were paralyzing me. I felt like an imposter at work trying to be a leader, and I felt like a failure in my marriage because I knew I was putting stress on my wife. Then I got sick and it made me mentally reckon with a lot of things. I thought I might die. I thought I might get stuck in an ICU, all alone, away from everyone I love and care about, hooked up to a machine to get air into my lungs, as a hospital room doubling as purgatory would become my tomb.

Then I started to feel better, and something happened. My brain started feeling better. All the chaos that had been existing in my head for months had been silenced. It felt like spending months searching through the darkness for an escape, and finally finding light. I slept a ton. I didn’t push myself. I didn’t focus on work. I didn’t focus on my social life. I didn’t focus on social media. I didn’t focus on anything. I just…existed. And it was the best thing I could have done.

So if you have Covid and you are out of work right now and nowhere to be, just try to enjoy the fact that you are very present, in the moment, and that literally nothing other than your own well being matters right now.

Once I Get Rid of Covid, Am I Basically Invincible?

Yep

Really?

No. God no. I still have zero energy and struggle to get through my days without falling asleep at my desk. It’s a struggle. It takes time. Hell, the doctor said I could still be testing positive in two months. I’m not contagious anymore. I can exist in society, but it’s a struggle.

That’s the whole problem with this. Three years ago, back in March 2020, we were watching Tiger King, thinking that this was going to be a six week inconvenience. I think a lot of people were correct in being worried about it, but judging by how many people don’t think it’s serious now, seven months in, it’s obvious that there were a lot of people who were just thinking people they could touch themselves to in their science class, rather than pay attention.

The fact that the virus is so prevalent in the United States says A LOT about the american school system.

Oh No, You Are Going on a Rant, Aren’t You?

You know it. It’s hard for me to ever take people seriously who didn’t take this virus seriously. 100% of the people I know that didn’t graduate high school didn’t, and still don’t, think this is serious. There is a reason that most of the people that vote for Trump are uneducated whites. People who are stupid enough to not know what they don’t know are the most dangerous person. You know who they are, too. They post from websites like Breitbart as if it is fact. All of their posts where they think they are being smart are just memes because they are too dumb to actually have their own thoughts. They also don’t understand the there/their/they’re or know/no homophone tree.

Yes, i’m most definitely stereotyping here. There are also a ton of idiots on the left who can only communicate via memes because they aren’t smart enough to independently verify information. Usually, they wanted Bernie Sanders to win. I say wanted, because there was only a 5-10% chance that they were ever going to vote in the first place. Odds are that they would have blown it off to have a sweet smoke sesh while posting pictures of their cats(the Nickelback of pets). They post about the seriousness of this all, then casually go to work in bars and restaurants in between selling homemade jewelry. I can’t even begin to stress how much social media has made me hate both sides.

Also, fuck libertarians. Libertarians are tea party members who think they are smart.

But back to the topic at hand. Every person that I can say with 100 percent certainty voted for Trump didn’t take this seriously. There is a correlation. WThere is every chance in the world that we would still be dealing with this now even if the country had shut down back in March, but hey, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe this is virus fan fiction, but I like to think there is an alternate universe where people still read and pay attention in freshman science class and took the virus seriously, and now we don’t have to worry about murdering grandma at Thanksgiving.

Ok, You Got That Out of Your System. What Next?

Honestly, I’ve taken you as far as you can go. You are probably going to feel like a leper. Lord knows I did. I actually got my return to work delayed by a day because upper management wanted to make sure employees got a fair warning that I was returning in case they had a problem with it. If you were mad about the virus before you got it, you are still gonna be mad now. If you thought the virus was a hoax, got it, and it didn’t kill you, well then congrats on Herman Cain taking that bullet for you. This isn’t going away. The only reason more people haven’t died is because people are getting tested more quickly. It’s getting caught earlier and people are recovering. That’s the thing, though. We can’t treat that like a victory. As i’m writing this, Illinois is preparing to shut back down again. Just because fewer people, as a percentage, are dying, doesn’t mean people aren’t dying. What fucking good does it do to spike the football on the grave of someone who died because a lower percentage is showing out. That person still fucking died because America is nothing but a slack jawed, ether huffing illegitimate offspring of England, which itself is no fucking gem.

If you are going to have Thanksgiving, be smart with it. If you are going to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever, just be smart about it. I wasn’t smart about it. I got sick from it. I was miserable from it. Don’t be me. But if you already have it, and you are feeling better, then use your newfound immunity from it to help work with people and educate them. You are fine. That doesn’t mean others aren’t.

Honestly, all we can do is try to get through this together. In spite of the fact that there is a large percentage of this country that thinks this virus is fake or isn’t bad, we need to try to at least slow this down. If you take nothing else from this article, just listen to this: If you got it and feel good, that doesn’t mean everyone will share your experience. You are part of the problem with this country, thinking that just because something happened specifically to you, you don’t think anyone can have a different experience with it. I had a rough experience with it. The person I caught it from has it even worse. My wife experienced almost no symptoms. That doesn’t make us different. We are all the same.