And Then I Got Covid and Almost Died...

 You may not realize it from reading my blog, but I’m actually a rather funny person.  Just ask anyone.  My daughter will proudly proclaim me as funny and The Boy will describe me as humorous.  Even my wife will occasionally admit I have a mildly amusing sense of humor.  (Please don’t ask anyone else, as their opinions do not count.)  I’m the guy who giggles like a school girl when someone uses consecutive “dos” in a sentence.  It is my firm standing opinion that everything is funny if you look at it the right or wrong way.

As an example of my clever wit, we were walking into church a week after there had been a small fire in the attic and the water sprinklers had flooded portions of the building.  (See, funny already!)  The pastor was standing in the atrium, greeting us late-comers.  Above him, the drop ceiling was missing various tiles, obviously those that had been damaged in the flood.  My mind raced for the right thing to say.  My first thought, something about water, was a fail, but two or three trains later I had it.

“What happened?  Were you guys playing Mario?” I asked, jumping and swinging alternating fists into the air while doing my best impersonation of the “you got a coin ding” from Super Mario Brothers.  They laughed, The Boy laughed, and we proceeded into church.

On that rather short walk, Andrew, still laughing a little, asked, “How do you come up with that stuff so fast?”

I don’t really know.  The quick-twitch function of my funny machine parses situations rather quickly.  It can amend or rewrite thoughts about a situation at blazing speeds, finding just the right words to express the humor in most any situation.

Not having a filter assures that those thoughts are always shared with the world, for better or worse.

As it turns out, humor is my security blanket.  It is what I turn to when I am stressed, worried, or something is going horribly wrong.  As doctor visits of this aging male have gotten more and more interesting, I remember one time declaring to my primary doctor before an “exam, “Remember when we used to be friends?”  A similarly themed ER visit found me in prime form entertaining the doctors and nurses with every inappropriate ass joke I could muster.

And then I got Covid and almost died.  Technically the Covid was a few months before the Mario jumping incident.  But trust me, it ties in reasonably well.

My wife got Covid from a patient at work and was kind enough to share it with the rest of us.  She got a little sick, the kids took it better than Mom, and Grandma weathered the Covid onslaught better than all of us.  Then there was me.

I started out feeling sick.  My lungs began to struggle.  I tried doing breathing exercises to keep them open, but the illness progressed.  Exertion of any sort, especially walking up the stairs, would send my Oxygen levels in a downward spiral.  It took two trips to the respiratory clinic and a second visit to the Emergency room before I was finally admitted.  By then, I felt like the breathing capacity of my lungs had been reduced to the size of a walnut.  All humor had left me.

I was locked in an isolation chamber (i.e. specially adapted hospital room) and was occasionally visited by the extras from the ET escapes scene.  For four days, I lay in bed, tethered to various machines.  I had an IV in my arm, pressure collars on my legs, a glowing OSAT monitor taped to my finger (I could make another ET reference here), and that oxygen hose thing (Google tells me it is called a nasal cannula, or NC) wrapped around my head.

Sometimes I had enough energy to sit the bed up and watch TV, but most of the time I just lay there like Mojo the Helper Monkey, struggling to breathe.  One time I tried to roll over and lay on my stomach, per Mollie and the doctor’s advice.  After 30 minutes of trying to figure out the logistics regarding my multiple leashes and lack of energy, I found myself face down and more uncomfortable than I have ever been in my entire life.  It only took a minute to roll back over, followed by 15 minutes to recover.

Going to bathroom was the worst.  I had to sit up, disconnect my tethered legs, take off my Oxygen, unplug the OSAT monitor, and drag my IV poll around behind me.  By the time I made it to the bathroom, worked my magic, and lumbered back to bed, I was so extremely short of breath, it sometimes took 20-30 minutes to recover enough to reconnect anything beside the Oxygen.

One time, I sat on the toilet after a really bad coughing fit with my hand on the red emergency cord, ready to pull it.  I held it for about a few minutes before stubborn pride got the best of me and I managed to stumble back to bed. 

After about three days, a nurse pointed out that my Oxygen cord was too short and suggested she get me a longer one.  I regaled her with the struggle I faced just getting myself to the small water closet less than 10 feet from my bed.  How did she describe it?  Oh yeah, they had “…set me up to fail.”

The longer cord meant one less thing to detach from myself when getting up.  It helped a little, making the experience only absolutely miserable instead of completely defeating.

I occasionally had enough energy to reach my phone when someone called.  From those calls I garnered that Mollie was extremely worried about me.  My parents were worried.  My siblings were worried.  The dog was worried.  The doctors were worried.  The threat of being moved to the Intensive Care Unit, intubated, and put on a ventilator started to come up.

I remember my father calling me and encouraging me, in earnest, to do everything I could to get better; a difficult task when it is already all you can do just to breathe.  He asked me if I was scared.  Thinking about it, I wasn’t scared throughout the entire episode.  I was sick, but just waiting to get better.  It didn’t really cross my mind to be scared.  “Maybe you should be,” he advised.

Somewhere about day four, I was told I would be receiving convalescent plasma.  They hooked a new bag of liquid up to me and I fell asleep.  Some five hours later, I woke up feeling better than I had in days.  Instead of breathing through a walnut, my lung capacity had expanded to the size of a softball.  While still terrible, I can assure you even a little increase in the ability to breathe is an extreme comfort.

It took a few days to be discharged and two months to feel somewhat okay.  After leaving the hospital, I was talking to Mollie about her ongoing concerns during my internment.  She showed me a text conversation she had had with our pastor.  He had asked what he could pray for.  “That Mike would get his funny back,” she replied.  Obviously hesitant at such a dangerous request, he only offered to pray for “my funny to get an upgrade.”

Now five months post-Covid, Mollie has learned my humor is a necessary tool.  She can often be heard declaring, “If Mike loses his funny again, I’m taking him straight to the hospital.  If they ask what’s wrong with him, I’m telling them he lost his funny.  He must really sick!”

I’m not sure how funny my Mario impression really was, nor whether the pastor considered it an upgrade, but I have learned that even a bad sense of humor is better than Covid.