Five years ago today, I walked into my living room, fell back on the couch in an exhausted heap…and began a fight for my life.
I’d been exhausted before, but this was different. My body was so depleted of energy, I could barely lift myself off the couch. I told my partner Mike, that “something was really wrong…I need to go to the ER.” I thought that I had been struck with possibly the worst exacerbation of my underlying asthma ever. By then, March 27, 2020, the newspapers, gossip mills, and national news were filled with stories about a respiratory virus that had started in Wuhan, China, a few months earlier. It was spreading out of control in a relentless march across the world.
I had no idea that it had come for me.
We drove the few blocks to our local hospital. I assumed I’d be back home, possibly that night, after an examination and treatment. In truth, I hadn’t been feeling very well for a few days and had been to the ER a night or two earlier. I was told I had bronchitis ( which made sense) and given antibiotics and steroids to treat it. And sent home. No one tested me for Covid.
But when we pulled up to the hospital that night, things were different. The building was lit brightly against the night sky, and I think triage tents were being erected in the parking lot. It looked like a building that was preparing for an assault.
Before I could even go through the front door, I was given a mask to wear. Masks were being debated in the news—there was actually a shortage, and nurses were making their own at home. The common wisdom was that PPE ( Personal Protective Equipment ) should be reserved for medical professionals who were now being forced to deal with what was rapidly becoming a worldwide pandemic.
As I was wheeled into the hospital, I waved goodbye to Mike, my significant other. Little did I know that it would be six months before I would be able to touch his hand or feel his arms around me again. And that when I did, I’d be a very different person. One who had survived at least four near-death experiences, was intubated three times, in a paralytic coma for a month, and would climb back from the depths of despair and fear.
This day has great meaning for me. It was the beginning of a journey I’m still on today—to reclaim a life that was filled with joy, laughter, friends, family, and adventure. I can’t quantitatively assess what I’ve lost—it’s overwhelming to think about it. But the one thing that remains is my desire to live and to make my life mean something. Almost losing your life multiple times to a disease seems unthinkable. I wasn’t in a war—exactly— but I was in a fight for survival. Today marks the day I decided to live, no matter how hard it would be; it marks the day I resolved to keep going, to work hard at claiming my selfhood.
It is both a day of liberation and a day that marks the beginning of a period in my life in which I lost my autonomy, had to decide to live, had to work at surviving, and find strength I never knew I had.
It marks the beginning of my Covid Journey.
