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So I most likely have it.
It's Friday April 17th and I started feeling sick Monday April 6th. It's fairly rare that I've experienced an illness that's lasted 12 days and counting and showed little to no signs of improvement. In fact this week has been the worst (Monday & Tuesday especially - although last night was the first time I woke up hacking up several lungs at 2 am and couldn't stop coughing for hours). I've also never had an illness that has resided almost exclusively in my upper chest/lungs and I've never felt such tightness/lack of breath before. So it seems like I have a viral infection like I've never had before and I live in the epicenter of America's worst outbreak in a city with the highest density in America and my boyfriend was also sick and my doctor (on two video calls) said "most likely" I have it, so I'm assuming I have it. But I haven't gotten tested. 
Despite the unrelenting cough and the chest tightness and the "feeling like crap" for 2 weeks, I don't have a fever (thankfully) and I haven't been short of breath except when I walk Elie up a hill early. But I'm able to talk normally and so I don't qualify for testing (according to my doctor) and I'm not entirely sure what good it would do since there's not any kind of treatment.
I would love to digress into why in the fuck over a month into a quarantine we haven't ramped up testing in this country so that anyone with symptoms can get tested. but at the very least Hoboken has started the Abbott Labs rapid testing this morning (priority given to medical and emergency workers) and maybe that's the sign that someone (not the federal government of course) is actually attempting to solve the problem of (a) testing people who are sick so we can get to (b) widespread testing of even those who are asymptomatic so we can get to (c) re-opening the freaking country from the widespread quarantine but of course that would assume (a) we actually had leadership in the executive branch at this point in our country (or any point in the past 4 hellish years of Fuck Trump) but I said I didn't want to digress. Sorry about that. My mood about braving the quarantine definitely ended somewhere between coughing up half my guts in the bathroom at 2 am and waking up to Trump's tweets about "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!" because... that's what it's like to live in America in 2020. Because a bunch of racists and sexists wanted to take the country back and voted for an incompetent blowhard sociopath with a well-documented obsession with dictators. Good times. .
But it's definitely a mild case and according to my doctor I'm on the milder side of the "officially mild" cases so that's good. And my boyfriend has fully recovered already (he's much younger). I've been taking an inhaler she prescribed for a couple days and I've just started an antibiotic in case it isn't COVID and otherwise I'm just trying to drink a lot of water, eat healthy, and rest. There's nothing else to do anyway. I'm avoiding stores and all contact with people but I need to walk Elie during the day so I wear a mask (I have what perhaps are not real N95 masks that I got on eBay but they seem "sturdy") and I do my best to stay 6' away from everyone. I've actually been pretty religious about it back when I was trying not to get it but (a) people are assholes who do not give you 6' even when they can and (b) in a city on sidewalks it can be difficult. I live on the southwest edge of the city so it's less populated and I try to take Elie on less populated paths but sometimes people won't use their brains and maybe walk into the completely empty side street next to the sidewalk instead of right next to a man in a mask struggling to keep his dog from barking but alas...I'm doing my best. I don't know if it's enough 
How did I get it? I don't know. Like I said I've been working from home / social distancing since early March - probably March 13, so I definitely caught it during my "quarantine". But I was walking Elie all those weeks before I started feeling sick (without a mask - thanks whatever government official decided early on we shouldn't wear masks...) and I was even going to Acme/Shoprite/Target without a mask, which was likely a mistake. Or my boyfriend (who was later in the quarantining - he had to go into work until the end of March) gave it to me. Doesn't much matter now. And I should preface again if this is the worst it gets it's really only worse than a "bad cold" but not quite to the level of flu because of the lack of fever. It's more scary than anything, when you hear about so many people dying, and it's been stressful not to have the end of work-day relief of a "couple" beers and some comfort (junk) food, as I'm avoiding all of that now and have for over a week and I kind of sort of desperately miss it. Like where's the fun in the quarantine when you're sick as a dog and you can't drink or eat or even sleep anymore. Good times.
On the bright side I just sent my agent my full final version of my next novel and I'm hopeful that finds a publisher soon. And of course, the reviews of my forthcoming novel I WILL BE OKAY have been amazing so far, I'm just waiting to see it in print. I've gotten the eBook already which in and of itself was exciting. But even that is tinged with Corona-regret as any and all events around it won't happen and the odds of me being able to go into a bookstore on June 30 to see it there still seem slim at this point. The odds that there will even be bookstores anymore seems a bit of a desperate hope at this point. This has not been a joyous post I can see now. But anyway, I'm sick. And desperate for a beer. How are you doing? Comments are closed.
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