Friday night was cold and dark and dreary. It’s late September now, and there was no missing the refreshing scent of decay in the fall air. All night the house complained about the wind, and my socks got wet during my early morning bathroom trip because the wind had driven a puddle of rain through the crack in the bottom of our front door.
On Saturday morning I woke up and didn’t feel too hot. I didn’t feel awful, but I felt worse than I normally do. Definitely had a raspy, dry throat and maybe some brain fog (though it’s hard to tell first thing in the morning before I’ve really woken up). I hadn’t slept well, maybe that was why. I was signed up for a pilates class, and to make it on time I would have to leave in less than 20 minutes.
I took an at-home covid test and got a negative result. But I still wasn’t sure if I should go. At this point I know so many people who have either gotten negative results and then positive results, or have tested negative at home and then positive on a PCR test. Point is, I don’t totally trust the tests. More importantly, I love going to this pilates studio and I would be monstrously embarrassed if I spread illness there, especially since I was noticing symptoms. Last week I had travelled for a wedding, and the idea of having to tell the studio owner “oh hey so by the way I have covid and I came in and exposed you and your clients even though I was feeling kinda sick and was around 100+ people from all over last weekend” was just too cringe.
So I went back to bed.
This might be the first time in my life when I immediately listened to my body and went back to bed when I woke up feeling meh. Before this, apparently, I always put my needs second to…whatever happened to be on my calendar? Seriously I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I didn’t go to something I had committed to because of something as pesky as my body.
The big change here is 2 years of covid. Since the beginning of the pandemic I’ve had approximately 1 million impressions with signs like this:
Obviously the handwashing and the social distancing made the most headlines, but it’s spelled out pretty clearly right there. Stay home. Stay home if you feel sick.
I’ll be the first to admit I should have been doing this already. Why would I not care about getting other people sick, even if it's not COVID? Why have I spent my life carelessly spreading my germs to strangers? Honestly, I’m not sure. I really can’t think of a reason because I don’t think I had ever actually thought about it before. Sickness was just an annoyance that got in the way of my life, and I subconsciously put sticking to my commitments over respecting my health.
I definitely was sick, too. It was 100% the right choice to stay home, because I spent Saturday and Sunday snoozing and slurping soup, and I woke up Monday feeling quite alright. This is not my normal sickness pattern. I remember in college I would inevitably wake up one fall morning with a sore throat and do nothing about it. I’d go out drinking that weekend and opt for an alcohol blanket rather than a real coat. I’d spend the last few weeks of the semester shuffling around like a zombie, tired, dehydrated, sick as a dog. During finals week you could find me in the library, huddled in a mass of blankets and scarves, my mind and body running on fumes of caffeine and ibuprofen, isolated only by a shroud of discarded tissues.
Only when my winter break came would I rest. And when that happened I would get home and be so sick and exhausted that I would spend my entire 3+ week vacation passed out with barely enough energy to choose what to watch on Netflix. And then I’d start the whole thing again going to some party in February, wear myself down to a snotty, dehydrated, infected shell until I needed to spend my spring break recovering again.
As always, I am pleasantly surprised that appropriately taking care of myself actually feels good. Intellectually I think this makes sense, and yet here I am once again, humbled by obviously good advice. Based on this experience, in the future I will be staying home at the first sign of sickness.
While we’re on the topic, Australia is having a bad flu season and that means the U.S. might too. Friendly reminder to get a flu shot, probably it’s free at a pharmacy near you.