We Are Not Sick. But We’re Not Well.
By Ron Berler
Until four weeks ago I seldom read my town newspaper. Now I turn to it daily, for an updated story bearing the same headline each day: “Coronavirus Tracker: Town-by-town breakdown of cases in CT.” As of Monday, in my city — Stamford, population 130,000 — the count was 2,046, the most in the state.
As far as I know, I don’t have COVID-19. Nor does my wife. Still, we take every precaution we can. We wear face masks when outside, and douse all doorknobs, countertops and light switches with Lysol spray. Except for walking the dog and rare trips to the supermarket — strictly in the early morning, during the hour set aside for the elderly (I’m 70, my wife is 66) — we remain indoors. When people ask how we’re doing, I answer, “Fine…so far.”
But that doesn’t account for the fear and anxiety that permeates our days. A recent ABC/Ipsos poll found that 89 percent of Americans worry that they will contract the virus. My wife and I are among that number, and like them we wonder: Has it snaked into our neighborhood? When will the tsunami that is the coronavirus reach us? The last time I entered a supermarket, in late March, I felt like I was on patrol in Nam, walking point, on high alert for an ambush. Later that week my wife began sniffling. A headache soon followed. She had a slight temperature of 99.3 degrees. What did it mean?
I rushed to the pharmacy for Robitussin and Tylenol. My wife sheltered in place in our bedroom and I moved to the guest room. Turned out it was just a week-long spring cold. Or was it? Maybe she’d contracted the virus and had gotten lucky. Six days later, I came down with sniffles and a touch of a sore throat, which I have yet to entirely shake. But my temperature remains normal, and whatever I have hasn’t developed into anything more. Still, I’ve remained in the guest room. Did I get lucky, too? Neither of us has been tested. How can we know?
My wife, while back to health, isn’t sleeping well. She’s up every two hours, at midnight, 2, 4 and finally 6, fidgeting in bed till she rises at 7. She’s a bundle of nerves, perpetually anxious that she or I will get sick; that our daughter-in-law, a pregnant pediatric nurse who works at a Washington, D.C., hospital, will fall ill; or that her 98-year-old mother, living alone in Queens, N.Y., will. She frets about one of our sons, who has been laid off.
Me, I live with guilt. In early March I took a train to Manhattan for a business meeting. Running late, I ducked into the subway though I knew it was risky. The car I boarded was half empty. No one made eye contact. Two riders wore face masks. Clearly, none of us wanted to be there. Upon exiting the station, a recorded message urged passengers to wash their hands. This I did with hand sanitizer, an hour later. Now I wonder, after my wife caught her presumed cold: What did I touch that day? Did I wait too long before washing? Should I have walked the 30 blocks instead and been late to my meeting? Was it this, and not that last supermarket visit, that triggered my wife’s symptoms?
Two Fridays ago we received a phone call from a representative of a local volunteer organization. He was one of a group of Samaritans checking in on the elderly to see if we’re doing okay. His was a generous act, one of extraordinary kindness. But it reminded us once again that, though neither of us has an underlying health issue, we are at higher risk than many for infection. My wife’s sleep did not improve.
We muddled through the weekend. A friend called the following Monday, sounding hopeful. The stock market had rallied round a sense that the virus’s spread has peaked, that the worst has passed, that there are hints of a leveling off.
What leveling off? That same day, a crematorium chamber overtaxed by a flood of COVID-19 corpses caught fire in a Stamford funeral home. The facility’s owner said so many bodies have come in, there’s a backup of one to two weeks to process them all.
There’s just no escape. So my wife and I continue to keep to our separate bedrooms, and pretty much remain indoors. Like many, we are not sick. But we’re not well.
Ron Berler is the author of “Raising the Curve: A Year Inside One of America’s 45,000 Failing Public Schools.”
