I started coughing last Thursday, the better part of a week ago.

It got worse. I couldn’t sleep at night in my bed, get dressed, or shower, and the coughs were coming more frequently and were more severe than I had experienced, even when I had chronic bronchitis back when I was smoking years ago.

I’m learning that Covid often weakens the immune system, especially in older people with respiratory problems like heart disease and diabetes. It was no longer a distant tragedy. It felt very close.

Men are notorious for refusing to admit vulnerability or asking for help. Thanks to my blog, I’ve made progress on the first and am working on the second, thanks to the lessons of aging.

For political reasons, the country and its leaders in both parties have made their deal with the devil –  poor or unlucky or uninsured older adults will have to be sacrificed for the greater good. It’s a little unnerving being one of them.

The billionaires have made billions off of the dead and dying and off of old people. They’re moving on to buying up social media sites,  the country, and our Congress.

According to medical journals, the Washington Post, and other media, Covid has become a “plague of the elderly.”

Nine out of 10 Covid deaths are people 65 or over. Doctors and politicians call them “acceptable deaths” because the rest of the country no longer cares much about them. And of those who die, most have diabetes or heart disease, or other circulation problems.

Gulp.

In America, profit margins and mortgages come first, and it’s time to move on and pretend Covid is just another trick of the “woke.”

I admit this prospect was going through my usually cheerful and optimistic consciousness as I got sicker and sicker due to a respiratory problem called chronic bronchitis. I felt a  hospital stay was getting closer.

I’ve never been good about asking for help, I’ve only done it once or twice in my life, and that is when my life depended on it. Consequently, I broke down, destroyed my family, and lived alone on a massive farm for years before I fell apart. I was immortal and didn’t need to go to the doctor.

That was for the weak. My heart and body felt differently. I learned the hard way that help helps. Still, I can’t bring myself to ask.

This is a problem for me and many men, and also why I write about this. I hope many women will show this or read it to their husbands and spread the message that many men, and men like me, need to hear.

Sharing one’s life can be narcissistic, or it can be beneficial. Perhaps it is both.

I felt defeated by yesterday, my spirit weakening, my hope eroding; I was slipping into a dark place where everyone needed help. But I could not ask for it.

 

Maria heard me coughing daily, and each time it began to get harsher, it led to vomiting, dehydration, and severe stomach pains. In the past, it has always gone away.

But it wasn’t going away this weekend. This was something new. Every day was worse than the day before.

I didn’t call my doctor. I didn’t tell Maria how I felt.

What could they do? I told myself. Everybody is sick. I don’t want Maria to end up as my caretaker.

I didn’t need to bother them. I just had to get better. But I wasn’t getting better; I was getting worse.

As a rule, Maria and I don’t tell each other what to do unless we see the other in trouble or heading for trouble. We will then intervene and speak up but then step back. We both believe in respecting the right of one another to lead our own lives and make our own decisions.

But even then, we step back and let one another make their own decisions.

My coughing felt much worse than anything I had experienced. Alarms, silent ones, were going off in my head, but they were silent alarms, and they alerted no one but me.

The people I call the Social Media Stink Bugs were already sending me messages suggesting I was obviously near death for coughing so much and was abnormal. There is no shortage of people happy to mind my business; the problem is they never seem to be honest, and I will never trust them.

By Monday, President’s Day, the coughing had gotten even worse. I knew something was wrong; I was already past the call-your-doctor time. I was now having trouble breathing.

I feared going to the hospital’s urgent care unit, which I needed to do on holiday.  I feared bad news. I balked even though I had someone who loved me happy to take me.

My primary care office was closed for the holiday. I called the emergency line and was asked if I was having an emergency. I said no, I wasn’t. I said I’d call back on Tuesday.

I’d been living on a chair for several days; my world was shrinking. I blogged daily, and as always, I am transformed when writing. Pain and worry melt away. I feel nothing else. But in my chair, shivering and wrapped in blankets, I felt old and dirty.

Writing is my true healer; it has saved me over and over again.

I wiped out a shelf of tissues and began swilling the over-the-counter antihistamines, which I know are dangerous. Please don’t drink too much of those, my primary care doctor told me, warning me that they aren’t good for me. But I was pretty desperate at that point.

The doctor was right. Mostly they made me dizzy and nauseous. I had trouble getting to the bathroom.

And they didn’t make a dent in the coughing. Sleep deprivation was taking its toll on me, especially my diabetes. I couldn’t get in control of it.

I’ve always avoided hospitals, and I have a number of the mental diseases and attitudes that men of my generation have. As you get older, tests become more concerning, as there is almost something wrong that needs attention. Tests are expensive, and I feel guilty spending too much on health care.

Maria shouldn’t have to pay for that in any way; our savings should not be wiped out by my troubles.

People – men and women also – used just to labor on until they dropped.

That didn’t take long in the old days. It takes a long time now. That’s help I don’t want. I don’t want to live to be 100, but I don’t have to die before it’s necessary. I guess that’s the message.

But it’s complicated, not black and white. Without modern medicine, I would have died a decade ago; I was hoping to die anyway back then, I was so lonely and miserable.

I want to stick around now to live the life I love. And I’ve learned this important thing about getting help: it helps until it doesn’t.

That’s the tricky thing about it.

You need to know when to quit; I don’t know that.

I had to eliminate many of these male quirks and phobias; I never went to a doctor for years. I’m still me. I denied diabetes or heart trouble, even when I was sure I suffered from both. Doctors helped me to save my life.

I’ve lived my lessons but often struggle to learn and integrate them into my consciousness.

Marrying a strong and independent woman has helped teach me how to grow and learn.

She just won’t put up with the old stuff, and I love that about her. I’ve long argued that feminism is suitable for men. But you have to learn to listen.

After lunch yesterday, which I couldn’t eat, I had the worst coughing fit yet.

My eyes had teared up so much I couldn’t see, every cough was like a stab in the stomach, my throat was raw, I couldn’t keep food down, and my nose couldn’t stop running.

My throat was clogged, and my chest was getting tight.

I knew where I was heading – pneumonia, a hospital visit, a ventilator, or even death. It isn’t a neurotic fear if you read the stats and see who is dying in hospitals today – people my age – with my illnesses. But I knew it wasn’t my time. I just needed to stop coughing. It was becoming an emergency I couldn’t acknowledge.

I needed to keep it that way.

Covid had weakened me, and I hadn’t gotten over it yet.

Oddly, I trust and like my doctors very much and trust and love my wife even more and trust her completely.

I began telling myself that I needed help, but I couldn’t say so. I also realized expecting Maria to be my only source of truth was selfish and irresponsible. Too much pressure.

I had to get answers from people who knew how to give them.

I had to get help in the right place. I had to let Maria know I was in trouble. I’m so good at masking it. I couldn’t open my mouth without triggering a coughing fit. I was sweating, shivering, and aching.

Finally, in desperation, I mumbled to Maria: “Maybe I should go to urgent care…I’m not sure.”

Maria knows me too well to lie to and is too intelligent to manipulate or fool. I’ve tried. She has evolved into a wise and callous person.

She is someone to trust and listen to.

She has a way of challenging me without angering, demeaning or hurting me. We didn’t fight, and it wasn’t an argument. She just said I had to, and I went. She was very calm and quiet about it.

Maria knew something was very wrong, or I would never have mentioned going to urgent care, which I immediately tried to take back, again and again. This was your decision, she said; I know it’s what you want. We’re going.

But she had seen enough and heard enough. We’re going; she just kept saying, over and over again, quietly but firmly. Like a submissive puppy, I kept saying we didn’t need to go, that I didn’t want to do. She just kept getting ready, and I just started getting ready.

My protests were firm at first; I said I didn’t want to go; I didn’t need it. We just kept going. I was in a kind of trance; I ended up mumbling and whining. I wasn’t even convincing myself.

I asked myself what I wanted, and I had the answer. I needed to have the coughing stopped and know my lungs were okay, that I didn’t have pneumonia or something else, and that this could get better. I was losing faith.

Getting to Saratoga Hospitals’ Urgent Care facility took about an hour. There was no line, no waiting, as there sometimes is. A kind and caring nurse came to talk to us, a kind and loving doctor soon after, and a kind and caring X-ray technician soon after that.

Doctor Tetu calmed me down, talked me through bronchitis and pneumonia, and said I would be fine early on. She had a great manner; her presence quieted me.

I realized that many of us are no longer used to being treated so well in a frantic, divided, and disconnected culture where everyone is a victim, put upon and mistreated. I was allowed to be the victim and treated so sympathetically and carefully there.

We are losing the idea of being gentle to one another. Dr. Tetu has not lost that; she was gentle.

I admit it felt good. It was what I needed. Thinking about this morning, I finally thanked Maria for getting me there after I had slept. I am feeling so much better already after using their pills and inhaler. The fear began to slip away slowly but surely.

I thanked Maria for being so strong, but as always, I shared what I had learned with her, and as always, she listened.

“I am grateful you recognized that I asked for help when I first mentioned Urgent Care. You heard the call. But I’m sad and troubled that even at this point in my life and our relationship, I couldn’t just look you in the eye and say
“I’m in trouble.”

I’m not there yet.

I told Maria I remembered the night she collapsed on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood and vomit. She was lying there for a while before I heard her calling for help or before she would. She didn’t want me to see her like that.

We both learned the same lesson in childhood. Asking for help was always more dangerous than not asking for help.

But after yesterday, I learned I didn’t want to be another man who couldn’t ask for help. I wanted to be the kind of man who can look someone he loves and trusts in the face and says:

“I am in trouble and can’t handle it alone. I need help.”

Yesterday, I got close. The next time, I promised myself, and I promised Maria, I would get there.

She listened carefully and thanked me for talking so honestly.

Then, she got her Maria-The-Artist look. “I have to go to the studio,” she said. I knew what this meant. Another quilt was being born.

I will be fine.