Last night I got
to thinking about a bout with C-Diff (Clostridioides
difficile)
I endured after contracting the bacterium during back surgery shortly
after Thanksgiving of 2012. I tried to compare my singular month-long
isolation in the hospital—followed by thirty more days in a rehab
center—to our current stay-at-home, social-distancing dilemma.
Despite sleepless nights on some sort of ventilator when the C-Diff
attacked my lungs or the trip to ICU when it went after my heart,
I've concluded that this is worse.
I was alone with
my malady back then, happy to have a hospital staff frantically
trying to keep me alive. At times, when it got to be too much, I
would've been happy to die. (9% fatality rate, I read somewhere when
I finally got the strength to read.) I was alone but everyone was
fighting with me. Now we're all alone—armed only with soap and
sanitizer, and our uneasiness and our fears.
I'm healthy and
my job, somehow, deemed essential. I still take my walk to and from
it, but I see no one. At work I wear lime-green gloves while checking
in people's packages. Later I'll try to direct them to their latest
Amazon order on the table outside the round window of my office.
(“No, your other left!” I'll yell.)
People pause in
the lobby twenty feet from my office door where they'd normally walk
right in. They half-smile or shrug, maybe both. I yell something they
don't quite hear and there's nervous laughter.
The grocery
store is even scarier. People seem afraid to look at one
another, as if a smile could either give off or attract the virus.
The check-out people are saints and I hope they don't notice
frivolities like my KitKats and carmel-corn as they risk their lives
ringing up my necessities.
No, this is
worse. We're all alone, wandering aimlessly yet dependent on one
another not to wander too close. I got it or they do. I'm sure
you're a nice person, but back off! And
it's not ending any time soon.
I remember my first day back at work in late January of 2013. Too weak
yet to walk to work, I stood at the bus stop. I recall the temp was 4
degrees and I felt so damn good to have walked that block—the first
thing I'd done on my own in two months. Now, whether it be hugging a
friend or simply picking up a package with my bare hands, I hope to
feel a similar exhilaration when this is finally over.
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