We call Covid the “Up-Down” virus.

Viruses, in my experience, were always finite. You got sick, had a fever, went to bed, and got better, day after day. When I got sick, my mother would drive me to my grandmother’s house and drop me off.

My grandmother was known for curing the illnesses of her grandchildren.

I would show up with a fever and a clogged head.

She would take me into a bedroom, get me into bed, turn up the full heat blast, apply red hot mustard plasters to my chest, smother me in heavy blankets, then close the door, leaving me for hours.  I felt like a boiled lobster.

Soon, I was soaked in sweat, and my grandmother insisted this would boil the virus.

It worked every single time. I learned from her to be patient, wait a few days and let the body do its work.

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The world has changed, of course, and she never had to deal with Covid.

There are many ways to get Covid, and there remains enormous confusion and uncertainty about how to treat the virus, which has broken up into several sub-viruses, each with a different kind of treatment and protocol.

Everybody has a different Covid Story. It was simple; they didn’t even notice; it took weeks or months to heal, and they suffer from aftereffects a year later.

Rest and drink a lot of fluids; that is perhaps the official rallying call of Covid. I get the feeling they don’t really know what else to say.

Monday morning, I felt great, just about normal. I wrote, researched, made phone calls took pictures, made conversation, and walked around the farm a bit. You have to keep moving.

By 1 p.m., the roof fell in.

I was in a significant “rebound,” as they call it; the coughing, congestion, and exhaustion had returned with full vigor, just as bad as the first day. My brain felt like soup; my body was a rubber sponge.

I had trouble followed any thought that was more than a few words long.

I sat in my favorite living room chair for five or six hours, moving only to go to the bathroom and get water. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t really think.

No matter how much I drank, I was severely dehydrating, and my breathing was labored.

I didn’t call my primary because she had cautioned me that this was likely to happen, especially in the days following the completion of my anti-virus mediation. Paxlovid. She called it a “rebound.”  Let my body do its work, she said.

Maria came and sat by me, and since I couldn’t focus on anything too heavy, we watched an early Pink Panther movie with Peter Sellers on my Iphone. I was in deep fog, unable to have a real conversation. I love Inspector Clouseau, but I couldn’t laugh. It didn’t seem funny to me.

Halfway through the movie, the fog began to lift, my mind cleared, and the congestion cleared. I felt better.  I laughed. I felt a great relief – finally, this was clearing up. Maybe.

We went to bed, and I slept well, waking up to an app alert that the number of sleep apnea heart “events” had doubled this week. My heart was struggling at night again.

My diabetes blood sugar numbers are still jumping up and down, and the virus was still in my heart, lungs, and blood.

I feel good this morning, strong enough to sit down and write this without strain or struggle. I made a veggie smooth for breakfast; I’m hoping to go out shopping this morning, although that might be premature.

Maria and I gauge our health by the conversations we have each morning.

Lately, we’ve just been staring at each other and mumbling; our discussions at meals are always lively and full of ideas and arguments. This morning, we had our first real conversation in days. We took it as a good sign, but we are prepared to slide back at any moment.

The virus has changed almost every day, and I understand now that my grandmother’s idea of a virus and my reality are different. Nobody is going to fix me, no one can tell me just what the hell is going on, and the virus will decide when to depart.

My friends who have had Covid – and the excellent blog readers who have it or have had it – all say the same thing.

Be patient, rest, and don’t be surprised when it goes down and then up in sometimes shocking and frightening ways.

A civil war is raging in my body between my immune system and this new kind of virus.

All of us – patients government officials, doctors, scientists, and politicians – are struggling to figure it out. Sadly, the disease has not become so politicized that experts mostly run for their lives. The new populists don’t trust scientists and doctors or believe in them. They are all just another elitist plot to control their minds.

The politicians have given up, frightened and bewildered, and the scientists are wary, tired of being ridiculed and attacked mostly by ignoramuses who wouldn’t know a virus from a Kangaroo.

So I am pretty much on my own, as are you. I got every vaccine and every booster, but I learned that quite often, that doesn’t matter. Yes, I figured that out.

The bottom line is that I know I will be all right, and yes, I need to slow down, be careful, be thoughtful, and remain hopeful. I will work when I can, drive when I can, and rest when I should.

I will recover; I’m not in danger of dying or ending up on a ventilator. There’s no one to call because no one knows the answers.

I am fortunate.

Some idiot messaged me yesterday to say she thought I was too happy, vigorous, and active to be sick; she decided I was exaggerating things.  I wasn’t sick in the way she wanted me to be.

To send this note to a Covid sufferer with heart disease and diabetes is a sickness all its own, and the fact that I could never do such a thing was affirming.

Maria’s good heart and beautiful soul warm me and help me heal and testify to the power of life. She tells me a hundred times a day that I will be fine, that this too shall pass.

In one sense, I get the same feeling from her that I got from my grandmother. I can trust her; I can believe her.

Every day I’ve been sick, I went out and took flower photos, which I am about to do now.  I’m proud of that. And every day, good people have sent me messages of comfort, empathy, and support.

Sickness has always made me more human and has reminded me that humanity lives and thrives in the hearts and souls of so many people. Covid kills, but it also affirms. That’s the good news that helps me to be hopeful every day.