Today is the day. In seven-ish hours (by the time you read this, it will have been yesterday), I will be on the way to the airport and hopefully a few hours later, I will finally, finally, have the house to myself. It’s been three months since that fateful night that changed my life forever. Except, it didn’t? I’ve been living with the duality for three months now of everything changing and nothing changing. That fateful night.
Pardon me for going over it again, but I still can’t quite believe it. No matter how many times I recite the domino effect of events, it still hasn’t sunk in. As a refresher. I got pneumonia somehow.
Side note: It’s still freaking me out a bit that I don’t know how I got it. I was so careful with COVID precautions. I only went out once a month to the pharmacy to get my meds. Then, once I got vaxxed, I loosened up a tad. I went to Cubs twice and to pick up lunch with my brother once. That’s it. How the hell did I get pneumonia? And I hadn’t been to the pharmacy that week. I mean, maybe it was nesting for over a week, but that’s not usually how my bronchial issues go. Then again, how would I know? I mean, if I am sick for a week and don’t know, then I don’t know.
Apparently, there are different kind of pneumonia, including getting it from mold? If that’s the case, that’s probably how I got it. Or it might have been a week or two before and just incubating. I did email my Taiji teacher the Tuesday before the Thursday night/Friday morning (3 a.m.) it happened to say I was unusually tired and could not make Zoom class that night. So I had an inkling, but only just.
I’m hyped to be on my own again. It’s the way life was meant to be lived. And yet….
I’m nervous. I’ll admit it here. My system worked (calling the cops when I felt faint and Ian contacting my brother when he, Ian, hadn’t heard from me the next day). My brother found me and everything marched ahead accordingly. But, there was a healthy element of luck in there that I called 911 before fainting. Had I waited two seconds longer, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make the call.
For a while, my mother was obsessed with figuring out how I got the pneumonia. I’m sure in her mind she was thinking if we could pinpoint what gave me pneumonia, then I could avoid it. As I pointed out to her, however, we could guess until the end of time and not be entirely sure what caused the pneumonia.
I finally had to tell her that she can’t wrap me in bubble wrap for the rest of my life. I was going to die at some point because that’s what we’re all going to do. She got an unhappy look on her face and I knew that she wanted to disagree, but she could not. She did say that we could be careful and not be too risky. Which, yes, it’s true. I pointed out that I don’t do risky things. Before I ended up in the hospital, I was especially careful as we were in a pandemic. Granted, I opened up a little bit after getting both vaxxes, but that meant I went to Cubs twice and went to get lunch to go with my brother.
Yes, my brother had Coronavirus and didn’t tell me until after he’d seen me, but I got tested and did not have it. Plus, I had non-COVID-related pneumonia, so that wasn’t the problem, anyway. I have bronchial issues and have had all my life. I get bronchitis like once a year (though, ironically, not during the pandemic) and it lasts for months at a time.
My mom was really annoying me by suggesting that being out in the cold caused the pneumonia (which I’m sure stemmed from my father as that’s one of his beliefs. He told me he believed that the cold open the pores and made it easier for germs to enter the body. Which, I mean….This is something that has actual science behind it and he has it exactly backwards. Heat opens your pores which is why it’s recommended you take a shower when your nose is plugged or use a Neti pot with hot water. When I told my father this, he got that hateful mulish look on his face and repeated that it was just his belief. Which was wrong. Putting that aside, that’s not how germs work! Sigh.). Even if she were right, I did not take morning walks before I landed in the hospital so that wasn’t how I got pneumonia in the first place. I told her somewhat snarkily that I only started taking a morning walk after I got out of the hospital and I didn’t do anything other than go to the pharmacy once a month before the hospital. In my car.
It’s been frustrating because facts don’t matter at all to my father and to a lesser extent, my mother, either. I know we all have our areas in which we cling to misbeliefs. In my case, however, I will think about the contrary evidence even if I denounce it upfront, and I may later change my mind. But my parents? No. What’s even more frustrating about my mother is that she will ask for advice and then reject it out of hand. I know this. She’s been that way since I was a kid and has only gotten worse the older she gets.