December Was Rough

Written - 12/31/23 | Posted - 12/31/23

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To quote Guy Montgomery from the hit eternal Podcast Til Death Do us Blart (2015-Ongoing), “The holidays can be a tough time for families.”

        Christmas has always been super rough around the Evans household. The place is always a bit chaotic but during this time of year there is an intensified pressure to clean house to make space for all that yuletide cheer which ultimately makes everyone incredibly stressed. Compounding this was a far more serious issue; literally everyone got COVID.

        We are hitting the second biggest spike in the neverending pandemic’s history. Wear your masks, isolate if you can, ect, it cannot be overstated how little you want this disease.

        Since before the pandemic began I have been worried about my father and my grandmother getting sick. They are both older and immunocompromised. It seemed impossible that they would survive unvaccinated. When the pannie hit I isolated religiously and masked as much as I could. Luckily, we all got the vaccine and everyone went “back to normal” in that blissful little period between 2021 and today. (Blissful for the able bodied, perhaps.)

Months ago I started remasking as I saw the uptick in wastewater COVID numbers. Unfortunately, the other members of my family were not willing to mask again. At the time I was working at a tiny out-of-the-way cafe and my risk of exposure was low. My family, not so much. All of them are in very public facing roles that have them interacting with many people every day. If they weren’t willing to mask, my insistence on the procedure would have minimal impact on them and would be ultimately pointless. So I gave it up. I don’t think I should have. It would have been better for them and other immunocompromised people if I had been more committed.

        Then my father got COVID in the middle of the month. It spread to my mother, then my grandmother. I was terrified. I isolated in my room. My first covid case was not long ago, only during my final-final period in college last May. It was brutal. I was in a fugue state for a week, barely surviving on NyQuil and Cities: Skylines. But back in the Christmas present, not only was I watching my family get sick, unable to do anything to prevent their illness, I knew it would soon happen to me, and I knew exactly how bad it would be.

        Getting sick, however, was not my principal concern, it was staying sick that worried me. Long COVID can be so profoundly disabling. Every single member of my family is already disabled, including myself. The thought that one of us could somehow become more disabled is terrifying.

        So I hid. Knowing there was a monster in my house. Knowing it would come for me. And it eventually did. I had a light case, but even when I was mostly recovered, and I am still recovering, symptoms remained. I couldn’t walk across our tiny, messy, pre-christmas house without getting debilitatingly nauseous. Couldn’t even sit at my desk to work my remote job without wanting to vomit. Those symptoms have luckily passed. But my fear that they might return and never go away has remained. Long COVID seems like a nightmare.

        My concerns for myself are paltry compared to those I have for my father and grandmother. He is still ill 10 days after infection. My grandmother lives alone and is far too old to have covid and take care of herself. Unfortunately my father has taken it upon himself to care for her, leaving me to worry about them both. I’m doing everything I can to support them and I hope it is enough.

        What is so difficult about being disabled, about being sick, that so many people do not understand is that you cannot push past your limits. If you do so you are resigning your body to further degradation and further pain. You just… can’t do more than you can do. I have trouble understanding that myself. All I want to do is help, to make everything tidy for the holiday, to care for my sick family, and up until yesterday I was simply incapable of doing so. It is demoralizing.

        We all got covid for Christmas, deciding to delay the holiday indefinitely while we work to finish cleaning the house, all of us still relatively unwell. My mother and I have to go back to work soon, me to my job at a board game cafe and her to her teaching position.

        I hope, this time, we all wear masks. This spike is only going to get worse, and I already hate going into the New Year with the dregs of a horrible disease.

        I plan to update this blog more regularly. Probably once or twice a week. Coming up is a piece I’m writing on work life balance in the 2-job gig economy, another dev log reflecting on NaNoWriMo and the power of friendship, a rumination on what makes cheap indie games so amazing, and an update on those BRASS comics I started reading so long ago.

        See you next time. Free Palestine, from the river to the sea, and wear a damn mask.