Nothing We’ve Ever Experienced

Minus 2 trips to the grocery store, a drive to run my car and clear my head, and many trips to specialists in early 2021, I rarely left my property from March 7, 2020, to about August 2021. Now, I do recognize the privilege I have in owning a house large enough that my wife and I have separate offices and still have bedrooms left over. And we don’t have kids to homeschool. So for clarity, I am in no way complaining about being at home.

But contrary to popular belief, this extreme introvert missed contact with people other than my wife. (But my wife is awesome, at least there’s that). I enjoy deep conversations with many colleagues and the spontaneity of running into them in a hallway and creating magic. That was lost during the pandemic. But what I did find was purposeful connections and catching up over randomly planned WebEx chats. And thus, a connection was possible. Maybe not the organic connection that happens in the hallway, but it was still there. What was also there was a collective sense of loss and mourning for what used to be. On the flip side, we got to meet colleagues’ kids and pets and I think we were able to see a more human side of each other. We also learned about grace.

My wise best friend reminded me that what a lot of us are experience is akin to the stages of grief. At some point through all of this, I had also read many articles about signs of burnout.

Here’s what I’ve walked away with:

1. As much as I love Facebook, I hate Facebook. The sheer volume of information that I saw daily that was outdated or just plain wrong amazes me.
2. I love my home but I also love being able to go out to somewhere that isn’t the inside of my car or the grocery store. And I miss traveling.
3. Moderation is key in all things: food, alcohol, work, and any other vice you may have.
4. I am more enriched by the youthful innocence of my students (high school and college) than I realize.
5. Therapy is a good thing.
6. But so is whiskey
7. Loss is hard.

That last one was driven home in 2021. From about December of 2020 to about June 2021 I was bedridden. I only got out of bed to work remotely (thanks COVID) and go to the doctor. Leaving the house left me exhausted. Hell, some days showering left me exhausted. My blood work looked funny and I was sent to a hematologist. No one said the “C” word, but many signs and my blood work made them overly cautious and due diligence was done to look for it – more lab work, CTs, ultrasounds, etc. I talk a lot about it in my last post.

Thankfully, my ailment was “simply” an immune system gone haywire. With the right suppressive treatment, I physically feel better than I have in a very long time. My disorder is invisible to the naked eye and it affects the skin in places I don’t show the world. But such little research has been done on it that they were slow to realize that while it primarily affects my skin, the inflammation that causes it mirrors other inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

I mentioned loss. 2021 sent me loss like I’ve never experienced. It started with the autoimmune disorder. I stopped being interested in food around the end of December 2020. Between the loss of appetite and being bedridden, between May 2020 and May 2021, I lost 50 lbs. While this was generally a good thing health-wise, it was traumatic. It wasn’t on purpose and when I looked in the mirror, or at the screen during the many, many, many WebEx and Zoom calls, I didn’t recognize myself. Between the body dysmorphia and grief, I’ve gained about 35 of those pounds back. I’m working on reversing that in a healthy way and have to remember that slow and steady wins the race. Maybe this will be like locing my hair. I wasn’t prepared for what it would look like the first time, so I ended up cutting them off. I tried again, the second time prepared for the change and now I’ve had locs since 2003. Wish me luck.

Around June 2021 I started a new medication regimen that seems to be keeping my immune system at bay. Things were looking up. In a funny twist of fate, they had to cancel a surgery that would have required me to be hospitalized for at least 6 weeks because I was too anemic to safely have it. But this cancellation led to a drug regimen that prevented the need for surgery at all.

Then August, my birthday month, came. It started off poorly became my grandmother was hospitalized in late July. The Tuesday before she went into the hospital I had taken her to the doctor and she was mostly her sassy self. Sometime later that week, she stopped eating and had a shift in behavior. As had happened previously, that meant a trip to the ER for a suspected UTI. If you have seniors in your life, be mindful of their behavior. UTI’s present in seniors differently and can cause sudden cognitive problems. But I digress. She didn’t survive that trip to the hospital. She was admitted on Thursday and by Friday was quickly declining. They diagnosed an infection caused by a drug-resistant bacterium. They attempted specific antibiotics but the infection wouldn’t budge. We decided on palliative care via hospice on Tuesday, she was moved on Wednesday and she passed in the early hours of Thursday morning. She was 92. She led a full life in which she loved and was loved but that knowledge doesn’t make me miss her any less.

Fast forward to the end of the month and following a birthday party that I was hesitant to have, 4 of my closest friends and I got COVID. One was likely immune as she had previously contracted it and was fully vaccinated. I live with so much guilt over this. While it was a vaccine win for me as no one at the party who was outside caught it, and minus the eventual loss of taste, it barely registered as more than a cold for me (I’ve had worse colds), it was likely a link in a chain of events that would later take my very best friend in the world -ironically, the one who many paragraphs ago reminded me about the stages of grief- away from us…way too soon. More about her in another blog, but I closed 2021 with a hole in my heart that may never close. I believe it may shrink, but it will never close.

Writing is therapeutic. I’ve been sad and frustrated lately. And I’m ok with being sad, but the frustration can’t and won’t continue. I’m ok with being sad because I know why I’m sad and it’s justified. I also believe it won’t last forever. I miss my friend more than I knew was possible. But I also cherish the memories we created and know she did great work. She was an awesome person and I doubt anyone who spent any real time with her can say she didn’t touch their lives.