Out of Practice, Part 1

I’ve been sick all weekend. It’s been a low level sick where I’m just feeling crummy but not enough for a trip to the doctor. Fever, headache, congestion, aches… not terribly sick but my mind began to explore what this could be; such a strange feeling this sickness; and with a gulp in my chest I realized it sounded like it might be breakthrough Covid. I’m fully vaccinated, have been since March, but breakthroughs, as they’re calling it, are happening. And with my altered chemistry from those delightful chemo cancer treatments a few years back, my crazy brain thought I’m more likely to get a breakthrough than your run of the mill healthy vaccinated person. I have nothing to back up that theory.

To be honest, I’m not terribly concerned for my sake if I developed a breakthrough case because I trust what the CDC has said that it won’t be a critical situation. But, my daughter works at a day camp among all of those unable-to-be-vaccinated children, and I worried for them in case I passed along the virus to her. Therefore, I quickly got myself into my local CVS for a test and in just over 24 hours the negative results came back.

So hey, let’s pause for a moment for a brief public service rant. All of you who haven’t accepted the vaccine yet because you don’t want anyone telling you what to do, I respect your feelings and right to choose. However, have you considered, maybe, making a choice that has nothing to do with government pressure and everything to do with protecting others, like the unvaccinated kids? Or, how about choosing not to be sick yourself???? Rumor has it that some people end up very sick in the hospital from this virus and even DIE! Can you imagine? All because they didn’t want anyone telling them to get a little stick in the arm.

Back to me. I’ve been taking for granted feeling healthy with nothing but a few allergic sniffles to spoil my days. I didn’t realize that this is going to be one helluva year for viruses. Unfortunately, with social distancing and masking up around other people, our natural immune systems have forgotten what to do when they run across a common cold or other virus because they’ve been out of practice. Instead of a virus sighting sending our immune systems running for armor and other sorts of protection, they just stand there dumbly scratching their heads. Huh, what’s that thing? A virus? Are we supposed to DO something about it? Hah. How could we forget our friend the common cold? Sneezes, sniffles, headache, fever, chills, such a wonderful memory. All I can hope at this point is that my immune system regains its memory quickly from this experience and knows what to do the next time it runs across another virus. Because, unfortunately, there isn’t a vaccine I can take for the common cold.