What is fact? What is truth? I am waxing philosophical as I sometimes do. I am learning that memories are not 100 percent truth and fact. I am a fallible human so I will share my facts and truths to the best of my ability.
This is my story of covid 19. The nightmare that rocked the world and the awareness that it gave me that the Influenza Pandemic of the 1920s was more than just a story. Mostly I am writing this so that someone can have my perspective if they are faced with a Pandemic of their own.
I don't remember the first time I heard about the pandemic on TV. I believe it started in December 2019 but it wasn't really on my radar at that time. I lived in my daughter's basement. It was a nice basement. 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a kitchen, dining room and living room. Probably around 1,500 square feet. We had a cat named Mele Kalikimaka who had been with us a little over 2 years. Upstairs my daughter lived with her husband and 4 children, my grandchildren. The best part of living there was seeing all of them every day. We lived there for a little over 5 years.
I had been forced to quit school and work in 2017 due to my health. I had been diagnosed with Dysautonomia and Sarcoidosis. Those weren't my only health issues. That was really difficult for me because I love to accomplish things and meet people. I am an extrovert. I like to retreat sometimes but only for short periods of time.
My husband had been disabled since 2000. We lived on our disability income. Our daughter would sometimes talk about wanting a larger house. My husband and I had always enjoyed looking at houses. We found a realtor on Zillow who we were looking at houses with. Our daughter decided she wasn't ready. The realtor started finding houses just for us. We thought it was a fantasy. We didn't think we could buy a house on our income. But we didn't have anything better to do. Whenever someone would ask if we were buying a house I would say "I don't know." Because I didn't. It felt like I was swept up in a whirlwind.
Looking back, there was a definite energetic shift. I don't know what caused it. Maybe it was the pandemic. It affected all of my relationships. I think that is why we were searching for a house without me establishing that I was on board.
In March of 2020 we found our house. I loved that house so much. It was a 3 level townhouse. It was located so that driving from my daughter's house to my house was not scary and we could do it every day. I didn't want to see my family less. It was convenient for my home health nurse. None of my health care would change. It was perfection. The neighborhood was beautiful. I have a tickle of a memory of looking at that house after we were under contract wondering... Are we moving in a pandemic? What does that mean? Is it safe?
We did it. We bought a house in the beginning of a pandemic in Eagle Mountain, Utah. I definitely didn't know what that meant.
We moved into our new home in March. The day we closed on the house we bought 2 puppies from the Puppy Store. We knew almost immediately that was a bad idea. But it was done. They were very firm about no refunds.
We put all of our focus into moving, unpacking, organizing and beautifying our home. Oh, and training our 2 little service dogs and learning how to care for them. We went from seeing family every day to almost never. Everyone said that it wasn't safe for people like me to interact with children. We started wearing masks and we still have an endless supply of masks and hand sanitizer. We became really good at ordering online. I signed up for so many online courses. I became a certified Tarot reader and a certified crystal therapist.
Covid began during a political nightmare in the United States of America. I was still working when Donald Trump became president. I remember the morning after he was elected going to work in Salt Lake and seeing my friend Phay. We embraced each other and sobbed for a moment. There were many times during the pandemic when I would have loved to do that again. She understood me. I felt betrayed by the political system. Donald Trump publicly said that all Mexicans who came into the USA were rapists and murderers before he was elected. My husband is Mexican. Donald Trump publicly said that it was okay to go up to a married woman and grab her by the pussy. I couldn't believe that was on TV! I am a woman. Half of the USA is female. There were so many more examples of how he was bad for our country but he was elected anyway. This came on the heels of my faith crisis. I couldn't trust the church I was raised in, I couldn't trust the government of my country. I couldn't trust my health. And now all my friends and family were being divided by politics and I was being advised to stay away from everyone because I was high risk.
I am an extrovert. I missed my friends, I missed my family. It hurt to be isolated. I didn't get to meet my neighbors.
I had been politically active since being diagnosed with Sarcoidosis in 2017. In 2019 I had gone to capitol hill and gotten runners injuries on both knees by walking around to meetings with all of the Utah senators and representatives. I was teaching them about the Orphan Drug Act and why it was so important to continue funding the NIH (national institute of health). I had returned to DC for more advocacy training in February 2020 before we knew about the pandemic. Now all advocacy had to be done online. There was such division.
One team said, follow the government blindly. Wear a mask, use hand sanitizer, don't leave your house.
One team said, the government is betraying us, covid is not real, don't wear a mask, don't use hand sanitizer, carry on as usual.
Yes there were people in between and at further extremes. The one that hurt the most was when people would say, "It is only killing the sick and elderly. That's ok. We don't have to worry about it." That made me feel expendable.
During this time my insurance decided to pay for my IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin). That was amazing. I was feeling better than ever. My doctor believed it was good to protect me against covid. I was doing so well that I was starting to think about returning to work. That lasted for 6 months. Then my insurance said that they wouldn't pay for it anymore. So, my health slowly declined again. That was frustrating.
We survived 2020. It is really hard to stay on guard for an entire year. It is exhausting. My mom saved up money and she and I spent a week in Sedona in May 2021. It was marvelous. We are both into energy healing. We looked for vortices. We went to the church on the rock. My mother painted that church before I was born and I had never been there. It was such a beautiful, spiritual experience. Neither of us are catholic but the energy in that church is so beautiful that it didn't matter. We loved it. We ate at fun restaurants, met a friend in Arcosante, we looked at art. We went to a bead shop and bought what we needed to make malas. We went to native american gift shops. It really was marvelous.
After returning home I received some terrible news. My disability insurance had decided that they were giving me too much money. They wanted me to return $40,000 and they were going to reduce my monthly income. I didn't know what to do. I asked my dad for money. He helped for 2 months and then said he couldn't keep doing that. We decided the only thing to do was to sell our home. We contacted the realtor who had helped us to buy it. We were doing everything we were supposed to do when tragedy struck July 2021.
Our 1996 mustang burst into flames when it was started to pull it back into the garage. The nose of it was in the garage. The flames consumed the inside of the garage and licked up the front of the house. The smoke filled the house. That is the day we met most of our neighbors. The fire trucks filled our street. It was surreal. It was a Sunday. My daughter didn't want us to spend the night in the house. We were in shock. She couldn't get us to move.
The next day the first people to help us came. Fortunately we had good insurance. Unfortunately, there was a pandemic and we didn't know what we were doing. We got into a hotel that night. We thought we would be there for a month. Someone took all of our clothes and things to wash. The insurance gave us an allowance for food and clothing and we moved to a 400 sq ft hotel room with 2 dogs and a cat. We were there for 9 months.
Being paranoid and confused about covid, being chronically ill with a lung disease and living in a hotel is a horrible combination. I did tarot readings for hotel staff. I kept bringing more and more stuff into the hotel to make it feel like home. My home health nurse continued to come to give me my fluids twice a week. I am so grateful to her. She was my lifeline through covid and the fire.
The hotel was not a picnic. There were multiple false fire alarms. They terrified us and compounded our trauma. We were on the 3rd floor so when the alarm would go off we had to get our dogs, cat and my walker down 3 flights of stairs before we could take deep breaths and calm down.
There was a housekeeper who saw my checkbooks while cleaning our room and decided it would be a good idea to write herself checks and cash them. That removed any sense of safety that I had. I cleaned my own room after that. We had to get new bank accounts. It made me realize how many people had a key to my hotel room.
I had no safety.
The following October I was in a car accident. I didn't have emotional space for that. I sat in the car and beat on the steering wheel and screamed for a while. It took a while before I could speak without screaming.
No more stress. No more stress.
Then one day our neighbor texted us that there was water coming into her basement from our house. I rushed over to find that the basement toilet was leaking and had flooded the basement. Another claim on our insurance. I called my dad and I called the man in charge of the fire restoration. All of the items that had been cleaned because of fire were in boxes on our basement floor in about 4 inches of water.
Sometimes you just keep going even when it feels like you can't.
I went to visit my parents in early 2022. My father asked me to move back to Phoenix. I really wanted to move to the Oregon coast. But after discussing it with my husband we decided to move back to Phoenix.
In April 2022 we were finally able to move out of the hotel and sell our house.
We paid our debts and took a 30th anniversary trip.
We drove to Idaho and saw our son graduate with his doctorate as a Nurse Practitioner. We drove to Oregon to see my good friend and I became and Usui Reiki Master. While we were in Oregon, Antar got really sick. Then we drove to the ocean. I was so excited to see the ocean. It was amazing. The dogs loved it too. We drove down the Oregon coast and stayed in the redwoods. We were at a campground in the middle of the forest with no cell service and no wifi. There was a storm. Antar slept for 2 days while I twiddled my thumbs. It was beautiful and relaxing even if I was bored out of my mind. I was able to borrow old movies from the front office to watch. I walked the dogs, took some photos and napped.
We continued down the coast until it was time to turn inward to get to Ukiah, California. We were paying for all of the lodging for this trip with the points we had earned staying in a hotel for 9 months. That was pretty awesome. We got to see where our son in law had grown up. We spent time with his parents. We went to his gravesite. It was really nice. Northern California is beautiful. We saw Granny's farm. She has a horse that acts like a dog.
Next it was off to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I never knew that I wanted to see that but it was exciting. Any time I was near the ocean I felt this high that I can't express. The ocean gives me life. We continued down the coast stopping at the ocean as much as possible. We took a detour to Walnut, California and tried to locate where my mother grew up and went to school. It looks nothing like it did in the 1940s and 50s but it was fun to try.
We finally got into Phoenix, Arizona late in May. We stayed at the crown plaza until our house was ready and we moved in at the beginning of June 2022. We did all of that without getting covid. We had our 2 covid vaccines. That was a big deal because after each one I was sick in bed for 9 days. We continued wearing masks and using hand sanitizer and avoiding large gatherings.
I have always been great at packing and moving. I have been told many times that I should write a book. This was the most difficult move that I have ever done. I am writing this in April 2023 and I am still not unpacked yet. We had enough boxes and furniture to fill a 2,000 sq ft house and we had a 1,000 sq ft house with no garage. This is the house we owned from 1997-1999. We had little kids and a lot less stuff back then. My health had declined a lot in that hotel and I didn't realize it. I had more than my share of stress.
I quit my advocacy work. I just couldn't handle it anymore. It was too much. In Arizona I am busier than I was in Utah. That is because my family is here. I see my parents regularly. That is why I am here. I am managing their healthcare, my husbands healthcare and my healthcare. I should say co-managing. Or is it assisting. That is it. I am assisting with their healthcare. Another big lesson that I have learned is that reestablishing healthcare when you are chronically ill is really hard. If I had known I probably would have stayed in Utah. That is not true. I would have come because my father asked me to. But it has been hard.
Covid has been hard on healthcare in Phoenix. Maybe because it is such a big city. Finding primary doctors here took months. The one that we found is so busy. She only sees patients one day per week and she had to give us special permission to get appointments. She is not at Mayo. She is at Banner. So, I got all 4 of us to see the same primary doctor.
Things I have sacrificed for healthcare in Arizona: I don't have my home health nurse. I miss her so much! I used to get fluids through my port twice a week. I have not found a doctor to prescribe that here. I used to have oxygen that I could use as needed. I also had an oxygen concentrator that I used while sleeping. I have not had either of those since I left Utah. I had the best physical therapist in Utah. She did massage. There were times that I would go in with a migraine and leave without one. I have not found someone to replace her. I really miss my primary care doctor too. She was always available to me and she even gave me hugs. I am taking a lot more pain meds now. I need to do something about that.
There are some good things. The Mayo Clinic has been really good for my husband. They have done lots of testing trying to figure out what is wrong with me. And I love being close to my parents and Edna and my nieces and nephews.
So, after 3 years of covid I decided to let my guard down. I have been working hard at establishing my business online. I still have a lot to learn. Part of that was purchasing a series of retreats. I went to the first one in Hurricane, Utah. It was amazing!!! I flew to St George. Two of my best friends picked me up from the airport. That alone was worth the trip. I love them!!! We went for lunch. Then we drove to glitter mountain where we collected selenite off the ground. That was a new level of happy for me. Oh my gosh!! I felt like a cat in catnip. I wanted to roll in it like Scrooge McDuck rolls in his money. One lady said that I looked like a princess squatting in the selenite. It was amazing. The driving was a little scary but that made it more fun. They dropped me off at my retreat. That was amazing too!!! I spent 2 whole days and nights with 15 fabulous female entrepreneurs. I learned about human design and so much more. I did some card readings. I connected with fabulous women. I just can't express how it fed my soul. Another close friend picked me up after it was over. We went for smoothies again and she took me to the airport. We had the best conversation and connection. I love her. I flew home. I did forget to wear my mask on that flight. I put it on when we landed. My husband picked me up. It wasn't long before I was tired and grumpy.
The next day he left for Mexico. I went to help my parents. That day I hugged my husband before he got on a plane. I hugged my nephew. I hugged both of my 83 year old parents. I hugged my 62 year old brother. Then I went home and went to bed because I was so tired. Lets see how well I can remember what happened next.
Day 1. Tuesday March 28, 2023 That afternoon I realized that I wasn't just tired I was sick. I went to bed and have been there ever since. Symptoms: fatigue, pain, congestion. I took some NyQuil.
Day 2. Wednesday March 29, 2023 I decided to take a covid test. It was positive. I was shocked. I had never had a positive covid test before and I had taken so many. The fatigue is so intense. I needed to fill my insulin pump but I didn't have the energy. Symptoms: fatigue, pain, congestion, cough, fever. I am taking NyQuil every 6 hours when awake. And pain meds. I had a fall the previous Saturday and my tailbone and spine really hurt.
Day 3. Thursday March 30, 2023 I told everyone who I had seen in the past week that I had covid. No one else is sick. I wonder where I got it from. I am glad that I didn't get anyone sick. Symptoms unchanged. I got a telehealth doctor appointment for Friday.
Day 4. Friday March 31, 2023 I saw the doctor. She explained that there was a risk with Paxlovid that it would make the symptoms go away for a little while but then they would come back worse. With my delicate health it was better to let the virus take its course.
Day 5. Saturday April 1, 2023 Taking care of myself and the dogs has been very difficult. Other than NyQuil, I am not doing well at keeping up with my medications.
Day 6. Sunday April 2, 2023 I am so lonely. I don't like being lonely. I am glad that I have so many choices to watch on TV.
Day 7. Monday April 3, 2023 My brain doesn't feel like it works. I need to pay bills. One of them is late already. It is so difficult to do anything. I manage to pay bills. I don't know if I did it correctly or not.
Day 8. Tuesday April 4, 2023 I feel like I have been doing too much. That is funny because I only get out of bed to go to the bathroom or feed myself or my dogs.
Day 9. Wednesday April 5, 2023 I test negative for covid. My son disagrees. It doesn't matter. I don't feel well enough to go anywhere. I find out that my mom didn't go to the cardiologist because I was too sick to go with her.
Day 10. Thursday April 6, 2023 Migraine! Ugh. Still taking NyQuil. I take some Nurtec. I do even less than I have been doing. I ask for help. My nephew cleans up the dog poop in the yard and takes the trash cans to the street. My daughter brings me NyQuil for the second time and takes the trash out of my kitchen. I made a lot of trash.
Day 11. Friday April 7, 2023 I'm tired of being sick but not well enough to get out of bed. My mom comes to visit. It is my first human interaction since I saw her on March 27, 2023. I am not designed to be solitary. She stayed in bed with me for a few hours. I wasn't much fun. It was nice to not be alone.
Day 12. Saturday April 8, 2023 I am still sick. I am trying to take less NyQuil. Covid has done something to my brain. I feel less intelligent. There was diarrhea one morning. I don't remember which one it was. I took a shower one day. Brushed my hair one day. I have brushed my teeth twice, I think. I have changed my clothes a couple times. I need to fill my insulin pump again. I took it off a couple days ago. Last night was difficult. Will I ever get better. I intend to come back daily to let you know how it goes and when I get better. This can be my human interaction.
Studies have found that a person with Sarcoidosis is no more likely to have a bad reaction to covid than anyone else. My high risk diagnoses are: insulin dependent type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma
I think that is all for now. Love to all. I am looking for the light at the end of this tunnel. I love people. I love Earth. I am eternally seeking ascension.
