Living with Covid-19 by Stewart Wernberg
Good morning great people. I decided in the night that it might be a good thing to share Deb, my beautiful wife of almost forty years, and my personal stories of what it has been like to live with Covid-19 for the last eighteen days. The object is not to garner sympathy but to fully encourage those who have not walked this dark road to keep taking every precaution to avoid contracting this scourge.
It is also to caution against the looloos who would urge upon you myriad conspiracy theories that Covid-19 is not real or has been grossly exaggerated by governments and other organisations for their own sinister and nefarious purposes. I’m not saying that the latter are entirely false. But what I will try to explain from the perspective of the two of us, lucky to have survived, is that it’s beyond any picnic. In fact, it’s beyond anything you could possibly imagine.
My ramblings on this subject are far too long for a what’s app group and so I have posted them on a website, here. Please click to share our story. In conclusion on this thread, I would like to express Deb and my immense gratitude to all our friends both in and out of Farm Comm and our family who have offered unstinting help and support. You have made a huge difference to us and it is beyond explanation to convey how that support has buoyed us up in the past couple of weeks. May God bless and protect you all and indeed, everyone.
I don’t propose to list the entire raft, nay should I say cacophony, of all the symptoms of this ghastly disease. We are all different and doubtless experience many different effects. But I would like to share with you some of the nastier ones.
Perhaps the worst is the fear, especially in the long dark hours when sleep is illusive that you are not going to make it through the night. This may sound irrational but recall that there is nothing normal about this disease. It screws with your head. And then, as it progresses there are times you feel so bad, so awful, that the prospect of dying actually takes on a weird attraction of its own, a potential terminal to this dark tunnel which sometimes seems to have no light at its end.
The brain fog, apparently medically described as clouding of consciousness or Verdunkelung des Bewusstseins, is another tribulation which can best be described as hideous. Yesterday I finally remembered that my name was Simon. Sorry, just kidding but take it from us, living under this cloud is not that great. Loss of taste (thankfully I personally never had this one) and smell are of little significance. These are mere bagatelles.
To the best of my knowledge -and I say this with great gratitude- neither Deb nor I have any enemies. Although, who knows, perhaps I may have after writing these few words? But if we did, we would not wish this illness upon the worst of them. It is worse than anything that we have ever suffered in our years on planet earth. Whatever you have heard about Covid-19, it is a hundred, possibly a thousand times worse.
So I say this with feeling. Conspiracy theorists who would urge you otherwise really suck. They are welcome any time to come to our house and share our breath for free. Then, four or five days later (the median time from infection to symptoms) see if they still think it’s a conspiracy. Freaking lunatics, they mislead others and put them at dire risk. My great friend Jeremy of forty odd years was amongst the first casualties of this disease in England in March or April 2019. He’s dead.
You may wonder if there are any upsides to this illness. I can’t think of any. But there is a sense in which I have been personally incredibly blessed. I would have cheerfully killed and mutilated if necessary anyone to have been able to spare my beloved Deb this dreaded disease but we were seemingly struck by the same carrier if the articles on median timing are correct. That therefore neither of had to endure this thing alone has been for me one of the hugest blessings. My heart goes out to the incredible loneliness and despair that must attend those isolated from all loved ones and friends in hospitals. Having my darling by my side helping me through has been beyond awesome. Consider though that if you, the reader are lax and you contract this disease, you may not be so lucky.
I have the good fortune to have a great friend who coincidentally is also a conspiracy theorist. It always amazes me that this is so as Wrex is a brilliant intellectual, a linguist who speaks multiple languages. But for him, NASSA’s 1965 lunar landing was entirely concocted in a Hollywood studio; the RMS Titanic still to this day ploughs her rusty path through the seven seas, the sinking depicted in the movie with DiCaprio and Kate Winslet having never happened and the wreck discovered in Titanic Canyon off the coast of Newfoundland not being that of Titanic but her sister, RMS Olympia; Nine-elven was wholly orchestrated by the US government to justify its war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. I must say in passing with regard to the latter, I have often thought that if that was true, it was considerable bad luck for Osama Bin Laden unless the rumour is correct that he so tired of living year after year cooped up in a compound amongst only his many wives that he really did send the Navy Seals the heads-up as to his address.
But the ultimate weirdness of my friend’s obsession is that he is a member of the Flat Earth Society. He and I once sat on a beach watching a large ship on the horizon. When I asked him why only part of it was visible, Wrex intoned with bare faced insouciance a rambling “scientific” explanation premised on bending light waves. I’m serious. I’m not making this up!
Of course we all know that light waves do bend. Indeed in metaphorical terms this is a good thing because such waves have been at times the only light that has penetrated the tunnel of darkness that I spoke of earlier, affording some relief that this thing will come to an end . . . eventually and that the virus will at some stage stop emerging from a drawer or cupboard where it has hidden for a while, laughing maniacally and screaming “I’m back, I’m back!!”
But even Wrex amongst all his other delightful weirdness does not believe that Covid-19 is anything other than real. You may wonder why I have made this comparison. Draw your own conclusions. We are all thankfully so different. But if your level of fruit cakeness puts other people at dire risk then you really need to start examining your conscience – if you have one.
I have read some of the articles posted claiming that Covid is either non-existent or exaggerated. I fully concur that the alleged transmission from animal to human to me, a non-scientist, beggars belief. Deb and I are fortunate to have a colony of beautiful epauletted fruit bats living in one of our palm trees. We would never dream of eating them but the idea that one of them could pass on an ailment so entirely gross is beyond reasonable imagination. My theory, for what it’s worth, is that this hideous thing is entirely manmade for some hideously fundamental evil purpose. As to why anyone would do that I have no idea but consider that in the twentieth century Joseph Stalin murdered more than a hundred million people as before him did Adolph Hitler; Pol Pot systematically murdered half the population of Cambodia, ostensibly to prevent these, his beleaguered subjects, from starving to death after he wiped out all the farms.
This thought rather neatly brings me to my conclusion. We live in a fallen world in which Satan as described in the bible is roaring and carousing because he knows that his karma approaches. I know beyond any doubt that it is only by the extraordinary grace of our Lord and God Jesus Christ that Deb and I have come through this thing. Why did we have to get it? I don’t know but I do know that I will never see life in the same light again and that I will forever be grateful to my God and King.
So please, please do not be fooled. You don’t want this thing. Even if you are asymptomatic it’s possible (in spite of what the theorists will tell you) to pass it on to someone else. And then they might die or live through the ghastliness of it, possibly alone and in some hospital beyond of the reach of friends and family.
Blessings abound to anyone who has read these ramblings.
Post Script: The kitten in the background is Mischief. We adopted her two days before it hit us. She has gone a long way to preserve sanity.