So, I had cold, or a flu bug, or a something at the end of February and the first week of March. And of course, I’ve been going over and over and over those symptoms. I practiced good isolation for a week, felt better, did a very careful trip from that town to my home, and have been isolated for 8 days, other than dog walks and three trips to the post office, always gloved, always with social distancing. So I’m ok, but I can’t help but drill myself on what I went through.

These are the times we live in now.

It was an odd cold. I’ve had a lot in my lifetime, and I kind of know how they cycle through my sinuses, and sometimes settle into my chest. As the symptoms of COVID-19 became a daily topic of news, I felt better about not having a heavy cough, feeling relief that Oh! it’s not coronavirus!

But still… could it have been? Could it have been one of those atypical experiences with the virus? Between working in one area of about a quarter million people who travel in and out of the area, and with a lot of international students, and working in my home town, which is a tourist town, it’s not hard for me to imagine that I would have had contact with a carrier.

So: I want to catalog as many of my symptoms as I can remember, for whatever kind of marker that might be useful. To me? to someone else? Not sure. But it was a weird cold. I had my usual early spring sniffles and sinus crap going on when I was home at the coast. These are the things that came next.

Thursday 2/27 – I felt a little tired in the afternoon while packing the car to drive to the shop I work at in a town a couple of hours away. On the trip, I started feeling worse and worse – normally I go out to eat after unloading my car at the apartment I stay in, but by the time I was halfway there, I was feeling crappy, just an unidentified yuckiness on top of extra sinus crud, and I knew I’d be socking it in and going no where.

When I get to town, I often ask my hosts to help me unload my car (full of luggage and food and a cooler and art supplies and a cat who travels with me) for my stay at their attic mother-in-law suite. This time I did not, and called them to say STAY AWAY I’VE GOT THE EBOLAS (sorry, old joke), and went straight to bed.

I was running a low-grade fever (no thermometer, but a familiar feeling), very snotty, and had especially goopy eyes. I slept fitfully, just a little coughing, but on and off all night so I couldn’t stay asleep.

Friday 2/28 – I just hunkered down all day, trying to sweat it out, comparing every symptom to what I was learning about the symptoms of COVID-19 patients. Some matched, some didn’t. I had low fevers, and had incredibly thick goop collecting in my eyes all day. But no shortness of breath, no heavy coughing, only mildly goopy sinuses. I drank tea and nursed myself in isolation, and dozed on and off all day.

I’m prone to getting chest colds, that turn into worse things like walking pneumonia. So, I’m acutely aware when my head colds start to drift south. I was especially worried about that, given the reports of lung infection in COVID-19 patients. But that wasn’t one of my symptoms, at least not that I could tell.

Friday night I was feverish, nothing horrible, but I tried to bundle up to sweat it out. My eyes were still really goopy – I often get mucus in my eyes, allergy related, I believe. But this was more than usual, and notably thicker than usual.

And the roof of my mouth hurt. All night long, I kept waking up with it aching. It was strange, and I couldn’t find any ibuprofen or aspirin to help with the pain.

Saturday, 2/29 – That was the the day we heard about the first death in Kirkland.

I had my friend bring me ibuprofen and a couple of other things for the aches and pains, and that was interesting – we both know about cross contamination, and were quite careful and wary. She was using an exam glove to open the door to my “quarters” and leaving my requests at the foot of the stairs. Only after she closed the door would I go down to fetch things.

Saturday was more like a normal cold, but with aches and pains, and still that thick goop in my eyes. The cold didn’t go into my chest, thankfully, and I was starting to have hope that it wouldn’t.

Sunday 3/1 – still felt sniffly, but definitely getting better. At this point I knew that I was on my “up” – I had my energy back, though I tired easily. My eyes were starting to settle down, my sinuses more allergy-like than virus-like.

Monday, 3/2 – I actually went to work. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have. I worked with two customers, right up close and personal, no social distancing involved. I was careful; I did wash my hands a LOT and wore gloves, and changed those gloves more often than usual, and none of the three of us coughed on each other, and it all seemed fine. I felt pretty normal.

But by late afternoon, we’d decided to close our studios for the time being; this was days before the governor ordered all non-essential businesses to close. I had to completely disinfect every surface and handle and latch and switch and tool and device I could think of. It wore me out. But I paced myself, and did it. And didn’t have a relapse from it.

That night I did a start on disinfecting the apartment I stay in. I went out to dinner, knowing bars and restaurants would be closing the next day, and that my dear friend who makes the best Taco Monday dinner for me every other week, would be out of work starting the next day. I debated about going, but ultimately went with exam gloves on, only took them off to touch my phone (previously decontaminated) and my silverware and the part of my glass my bartender hadn’t touched (I watched, yes I did). I didn’t touch the counter; I sat six feet away from my bar pal; I didn’t go to the restroom. We kept our social distance, we made sure each other was ok. I re-gloved upon leaving the bar, and went back to the apartment to decompress.

And the next day, I finished disinfecting every surface I could think of in the apartment, said goodbye to my hosts from a distance of about 8 feet, and headed back home. I was feeling tired, but not sick – more an issue of stamina, than any virus symptoms.

I record this experience because I know I may want to come back to it. In particular, the unusual amount and density of the crap coming out of my eyes was very different than my typical allergy or cold symptoms. You can’t trust everything you hear on the internet or tv, but anecdotally speaking, I’ve heard incredibly thick mucus in the lungs is one of the dangerous complications the coronavirus causes, so my own unusual goop-flow definitely comes to mind when that mind gets to wondering.

So far, however, I’m back to reasonable, allergy-ridden health. I’ll continue to follow the stay-at-home recommendations, and pray (in my non-religious way) for those who are in the thick of it.

Okay, so this is fun. Or not, as the case may be.

We’re into day 3 of our self-imposed, More Or Less Sheltering In Place regime. This is the COVID-19 timeline, and damn if this isn’t just a massive wave that you struggle to stay afloat in.

The World Health Organization has identified about 191,000 cases world wide, and over 3,500 here in the U.S. While “only” about 60 people have died here, over 7,800 people have died around the world. And that’s just as of yesterday. The projected escalation of infected people is frightening.

Life has changed a bit in the last few days. We shuttered our gift shop and our tattoo studios for the time being. I hustled my butt back from the valley, where I’ve been working since last Friday, to get over to the coast before any kind of mandated lock down happens. I go back and forth for stretches of days between our two studios, so I’m used to it, but even that shift was transformed by the virus.

I am happy to report that I am not short on toilet paper, and did not have to do any panic buying to achieve this valued status. And I made sure my sweetie knew this treasure was coming back from the valley with me —->

We made the decision to close the gift shop on Monday morning. By late Monday afternoon, after debating going to appointment only with time between clients to disinfect the studios, we ultimately decided to close the tattoo shops for the time being. As I told a customer, “We try very hard to be careful at the studios with all health concerns, but with the kind of work we do, the wide range of clients we work with, and the close contact required, we consider that we are a highly likely vector for passing corona virus.” Particularly as I and my partner are both over 60, and so are many of our customers, it was the safest course.

I spent the rest of the evening packing up and disinfecting every surface I could think of in our valley studio – counters, chairs, pens and pencils, the stapler, the phones, our electronic displays, light switches, sinks and faucets, the toilet, the door handles, the alarm system pad, the copy machine, the printer, the railings on the porch, everything I could think of. I was exhausted, and perhaps mistakenly spent the rest of the night watching pandemic response reporters, medical professionals, and just plain folks living through it on the tv machine until about 3 in the morning. I probably should have gone to bed, but I suspect I would have just tossed and turned anyway.

The next morning I gave myself some time to relax and catch up (kind of polar opposites, but we do what we do). I also filed for unemployment benefits. I checked what our governor is advising, and doing about all of this. I thought about what I’d be doing for the next few weeks. It was overwhelming to contemplate.

When away from home, I stay with friends in their attic studio apartment. We agreed we should be social distancing, so we chatted across six or eight feet of air, but I did not go into their part of the house, and they didn’t come into my guest quarters. By eleven, I was packing up to head home, disinfected that whole apartment, wiped down everything I could that I was taking back home, and headed out.

I had to stop several times, each time donning a pair of exam gloves to go into the stores – I have a box of nitriles in the car, as of Sunday. I know a lot about cross-contamination, or rather the prevention of it, so that was helpful.

The basics are simple: don’t touch something that is or could be contaminated and then touch something that’s clean. For my shopping trips, I had a “dirty” glove hand, and a “sorta clean” gloved hand. My left “dirty” glove was for opening doors, holding the handle of the cart, grabbing boxes and bottles off the shelves, touching the screen on the self checkout terminal (don’t harass me, I have my reasons). My “sorta clean” glove was for grabbing fruits and veggies, and getting into my wallet.

I didn’t bring my re-usuable bags into the stores – I paid the 5 cents for paper bags, loaded them up (“dirty” glove handling the boxes, bottles etc that other shoppers might have touched, and all going into one bag, “sorta clean” glove for the veggies and fruits, which went into a separate bag), and when I got that all back home, three freaking hours later, I wiped down boxes and bottles before putting them away.

I also unloaded just the essentials from my car to begin with, then went immediately to take a shower. The whole point was to mitigate any transfer of the virus from the valley to our tiny coastal village. It’s probably already here, but better safe than sorry.

*sigh*

So, as I said earlier, that was fun!

Yesterday I was exhausted. And I think that’s in part why I needed to write this all out, to help myself understand why I’m exhausted. It’s not just the extra work of cleaning, packing, shopping. It’s the mental work of figuring out how to do things differently, the mental stress of hyper awareness – did I touch my face? Did that person cough on me? – and of trying to sort out the new routines.

Yesterday I woke with a great weight on my heart. But after catching up on the horrific news while helpfully interspersing it with cat videos and wonkette.com, I started in on sorting out our money situation, working out contingency plans, catching up with family, contacting customers and writing statements to post online about our businesses, and being heartened by how many people are just buckling down and doing what they need to do.

And I went for a walk in the beautiful sun. I need to do more of that.