It’s been almost three years since the world found out about Covid and I felt I was taking pleny of precautions. It was strange to not even get a cold in all that time.

Last Tuesday, Dec. 6th, my friend Randy and I went to breakfast and he helped me pick out Christmas presents. We drove to a few different stores and a good time was had by all, except he was super-tired.

He hadn’t slept well the night before and he’d been coughing intermittently for weeks, but now he seemed pretty bad. Randy has been around many non-masked people throughout the pandemic and I’d decided he must be immune to Covid. I figured he had a bad cold and I told him “I’m going to be mad at you if I get your cold.”

Tuesday night I went to dinner with a friend, which is still a rare occurrence for me. Wednesday and Thursday I gave massages to my two very elderly clients.

Friday morning I got up at 5:45 to take Kevin to his eye appointment. He went blind in his left eye a few weeks ago. He’d gone blind in his right eye about six or seven years ago because of diabetic retinopathy. That was really scary and he went through a long bout of having an ophthamologist zap the weak and puny blood vessels which grew because of the diabetes. Because the blood vessels were so weak and puny, they burst, causing his eye to fill up with blood which resulted in losing his sight.

Just typing this gives me the heeby-jeebies; it’s all pretty gruesome. When this happened years ago, Kevin’s fantastic ophthalmologist kept trying to fix the problem without surgery, but at some point hey agreed that surgery was the best option.

It’s called a vitrectomy, which basically involves sucking all the vitreous fluid out of the eye and replacing it. Ugh, sounds so scary.

But back then, the surgery went surprisingly well and Kevin’s right eye was pretty good not long after. He still has a bend in his vision because of the scar, but he can function well.

So I wasn’t as freaked out this time since he’d been through it before. Unfortunately, back then, Kevin’s surgery was the very last one his opthamologist performed, and now he doesn’t do surgery anymore. He said that his partner is great and would do just as good a job if not better.

So, i was up before six in the morning on Friday and it all went smoothly. Because it was on Friday, his day-after follow-up appointment was instead at noon on Friday.

They wheeled Kevin out of the pre-op room at 7:50 at which point I got in my car and raced home to feed and re-arrange our various cats. They said the surgery could take as little as 40 minutes and it took me 20 minutes to get home so I had no time to dawdle.

I raced back and settled down in the waiting room, and when they hadn’t alerted me by 9:15 I went up and asked about him and they said he was done. Supposedly the doctor had called when the surgery was over, but he didn’t call my phone and I wasn’t alerted there in the waiting room.

But no matter, I greeted my very groggy guy in the recovery room and he wore a lop-sided grin and did his best to sip water through a straw while contentedly munching on Lorna Doone cookies.

He was alert enough to leave pretty quickly; they had more people to shuffle in, and we had to go away til his appointment at noon. So we went to our friend Glenn’s condo, which was less then five minutes away.

I sat around in the condo trying to keep my eyes open while Glenn and Kevin chatted. At noon we went back to the office where the nurse practitioner checked him out and things looked good. He needed three different eye drops, each one either twice or four times a day.

We got home about one and I was really tired. I tried to sleep but I don’t think I was sleeping but really weird thoughts raced through my brain (more weird than my usual brain weirdness).

I finally got up and went to pick up his prescriptions and I took Mom with me. I suddenly felt like I was getting sick – was it Randy’s cold, or the flu? I was coughing and dragging.

When Kevin and I were watching TV later that night I wanted to go to sleep very early, and doing a lot of nose-blowing and coughing. I thought about sleeping in the guest bedroom but decided I was too tired to climb the stairs. Instead, Kevin decided to do that, so I was lying in bed and suddenly had violent chills. I’d just bought a new electric blanket and I cranked it up to high and I’m pleased with how hot it got.

I slept quite a bit, but when I got up in the morning I still felt really lousy. I decided I should take a Covid test just to be sure I didn’t have it. We’d used up all our tests so I walked over to Mom’s house because I knew she had one left. She’d spent the night at a friend’s the night before so I opened the blinds and fed the cat and took the test.

And immediately when the time was up the bright pink line screamed POSITIVE.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I was freaked out because, well, Covid, plus the huge risk for Kevin.

The rest of the day was spent calling the doctor and friends and the people I’d given massages to. I still felt lousy and the doctor called in some Paxlovid for me, which I finally got to start taking yesterday afternoon at 4:30.

I’m feeling not so terrible today and I have to sequester from Kevin for five days which means I’m here in the bedroom with three or sometimes four of our cats who essentially just sleep cause they’re cats.

I’m worried about Kevin because I was around him all the time before testing and if he gets Covid it could be worse for him because of the diabetes, plus one of the instructions for his post-op was NO COUGHING but if he get Covid, he’ll cough. Plus sneezing! Hopefully it won’t happen because can’t you picture his eye popping right out of his head when he sneezes? I sneezed violently about a hundred times on Friday night, but at least that was after he’d gone to bed so I didn’t spray my Covid germs all over him.

He tested negative today, but I read that he could get it up to ten days after being around me. I feel that at least if he can manage not go get it right away, every day will help in terms of his eye healing.

So now we just wait and see. Meanwhile, here are a few photos of the poor sad kittes.

Here’s Spot on November 1st, snuggling on my lap at 10:30 at night. He’d have been super happy if I’d decided to stay out there all night with him.

Pumpkin realized that the upside-down clothes hamper in the living room was a perfect place to nap.

The other indoor kities were all in the fenced yard and very photogenic. I even got Lovey to look over at me.

Sweetie, hiding in the leaves.

This is one of my favorite photos ever. I can’t recall what Riley was doing here; I think he was looking at some bird or something above him but of course it looks like he’s doing a serious yoga stretch.

Lovey was very active that day.

And here’s our outdoor lights with many festive decorations on the cat house.

And that’s about it around here. More than enough stuff going on, and yet also just sitting here in bed for four more days.

Ok then,

Mrs. H, full of Covid.