Tone Parsons

It’s been a long few months since my last post. A lot has gone one.

On December 1st, my guts were a mess. The next day I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, even my teeth hurt. I figured it was just a nasty case of the crud, but the next day I called in to my HMO’s on-call nurse.

She tiredly asked me a bunch of basic questions and didn’t seem overly concerned until she asked if I had any issues breathing. I told her I felt congested with a little pressure on the right, and she immediately started chastising me that I should have called 911 because it could be a heart attack. She was going to call me an ambulance, but I told her we could drive, so she sent me to the ER.

Once there, it took them very little time to diagnose me: COVID.

The nurse came in and began to take a sample by inserting the longest q-tip I’ve ever seen and shoving it so far up my nose, it must have swabbed the back of my brain. I said “thank you” as she was leaving, and she paused. Apparently, I was the first person to thank her for doing that in the nine months since this pandemic has started (I guess most just use foul language?).

I spent the next couple of weeks self quarentiening at the house, wearing a mask all day, and generally avoiding everyone else. It worked, because no one else got ill.

Then, a week before Christmas, my mother-in-law had a massive heart attack. We were told by the nurse that it was the worst she’s ever seen where the patient actually survived. My mother-in-law got angry at a nurse and walked the next day. She asked me to pick her up and I gave her a flat “no, you’re in the best place you can be right now” answer, so she called a “friend” who picked her up and take her to their house. They returned her to the hospital the next day because her condition had deteriorated badly overnight and she was on the verge of death. Thankfully, the hospital was able to stabilize her and we were able to bring her home the day before Christmas eve. Even more thankfully, her insurance covered the first visit (if you leave the hospital against doctors orders, they don’t have to). These same “friends” keep sneaking her cartons of cigarettes (she was supposed to have quit and told us she had). Ugh.

We’ve had to change our diet because of her heart attack to a low salt, low red meat, high vegetable diet. I’ve been cooking from the Mediterranean diet, and OMG is the food wonderful! Our favorites so far are a chickpea salad (I cut the parsley by 75% and add chopped spring greens in its place) and the caprese chicken (perfect as is!). The chickpea salad is quite possibly, my most favorite thing on the planet right now… soooooo good!

And finally, I got my first shot of the Moderna vaccine last wednesday, so I’ll be fully vaccinated in another two weeks (and able to join the outside world two weeks after that). That, of course, won’t allow me to walk around mask free like an idiot, it will just cut the chances that I’ll get COVID again (or spread it to anyone else if I do).

That’s about all I have. Be safe, wear your mask, and be kind to each other.