*COVID not confirmed by test, but we’re pretty pretty sure.
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, though it seems like this go ‘round we needed better words than “merry” and “happy”.
This Christmas and New Years was another exceptional (exception meaning, “unlike” others of its type) one. For our family the exceptional nature of the season played out mostly defined by sickness. We are four adults in one household, and all four of us came down with quite an intense sickness around Christmas and through New Years.
Here’s how it played out for us:
Our oldest son (early 20’s) began experiencing pains in his back and side and tried to grin and bear it for a bit until the pain became quite intense. He went to an urgent care clinic and was given an x-ray and a requisition for a blood test. He was not tested for COVID. Soon after, the symptoms began to change a bit and he himself wondered if he should have been tested for COVID. He contacted a few friends he had seen recently to see if any of them had COVID or symptoms of COVID. One of them told him that he had symptoms, but had tested negative via rapid (antigen) test. Our son told us this and expressed his concern that he might have COVID. His concern was that, if he did, he likely could have passed it to us already. We had no symptoms at the time. Soon after this another of his friends told our son that though he had tested negative on an antigen test, he later tested positive via PCR test. Then another friend related the same sequence of events. Our son went and picked up a rapid test and it produced a negative result. By this point he seemed sure, however. “I know it’s COVID.”
A few days later I was sitting comfortably in a chair reading. The day before this had been Boxing Day and I had gone for a walk with a friend around an urban lake in the fresh snow and cold that was lit up that day by bright sunshine. I actually recall thinking on Boxing Day that I had felt better that day than in quite some time. Then, when I had come home on the 26th, I felt a pressure in my left ear like you feel when you are in a plane that is landing. The pressure wouldn’t go away, but I had no other symptoms at the time. Until I was sitting in that chair the next morning. I had sent a couple of emails informing people with whom I was supposed to meet that we had had a COVID exposure and perhaps the meeting should be moved to zoom. Within a span of 10 minutes, while reading and sending emails, a dizziness hit me that is hard to describe. I told myself that it was just my ear, a pressure thing. I told myself that it wasn’t that bad. But then, and quickly, I could not even turn my head without the whole room turning over on itself and without experiencing a nausea that made me certain I would be throwing up within minutes. A half hour later I was in bed, laying still, unable to even adjust my position without a terrible assault of nausea and dizziness. I’ll spare you a further symptomatic play-by-play, but over the next day it became evident that all four of us were sick, some symptoms quite different, but all intense, and many on the list of Omicron variant. We locked down. We, like everyone else, were given direction via public health about testing. It went from, “get a PCR test”, to “get a rapid test” to “just assume you have COVID” within a couple of days. Then we heard, like almost everyone else, that the antigen tests, the rapid tests, were largely ineffective at identifying the new strain of COVID. Some studies had said 50% effective which made them arguably useless or worse than useless. Then we heard a doctor on CBC (how we’ve all gotten to know those doctors on the news), Dr. Isaac Bogoch, say that even if you have tested negative with a rapid test, if you have symptoms of COVID, you most likely have COVID. COVID infection is what most likely (more than other flus going around) explains your symptoms.
We have joined the ranks of people who have depended on friends to deliver groceries to our home. We have commented to one another frequently about how we won’t forget this holiday season. It has been unlike any other we have lived as a family. I do think that I prefer the times when we had hockey tournaments and maybe a day or two skiing at Whistler, but there is something about being sick together (being confident that we will recover) that offers a different kind of togetherness.
A couple of quick points concerning evangelical interpretation of sickness and pandemic:
Firstly, faith does not spare us trouble or suffering. People who tell you that it does are usually trying to have you send some money their way. I have jokingly referred back to the 91st Psalm during our family illness. Remember how it was used by some churches (not most) to promise that COVID would not hit the faithful? Some of the pastors who said such things died of COVID. The Psalm says;
“You will not fear the terror of the night,
not the arrow that flies by day,
nor the pestilence (plague) that stalks in the darkness …
A thousand will fall at your side, but it will not come near you.”
(I’ll say here - context, history, how to read the Bible well, how to read ancient texts, etc. etc.)
My love for the Psalms is not diminished, but I am under no illusions that “the faithful” have some superpower against illness or suffering. This is certainly not the history of Jewish people who read this Psalm or Christian people who also take it up devotionally.
When a Christian hits their thumb with a hammer it hurts the same as when a someone who is not a Christian hits their thumb with a hammer. (I heard Eugene Peterson say this once).
We ought to look not at how we can exempt ourselves from the frailty experienced by all humanity, but rather how when we do suffer, even under an illness from which we recover, we can experience the common nature of all humanity. Christian faith is most fully lived with an awareness of what we have in common with others, not an awareness of what separates us. Evangelical faith, in my experience, majored far too much on the “what makes us different” stuff. I don’t think you can get to real faith that way. We can somehow love one another more fully when we enter into suffering, not when we pretend that it can be avoided.
For myself, in the worst of sickness recently, when able to have a cogent moment laying still in bed, I learned a little bit more what it means to pray. I could pray differently for people who face chronic illness or encounter the kinds of obstacles that were exceptional for me as part of their regular experience. I could pray differently for friends and colleagues who are even now facing terminal illness. Dear God, may they know your presence even now, particularly now.
Final note, in this rather personal reflection on illness and pandemic:
In the evangelical churches in which I grew up there was repeated reference to the reminder from the book of James about making plans for tomorrow. The passage cautions that our plans may all fall apart and calls us to trust in God. It carries a kind of “you think you are so in charge” warning tone to it. In the same evangelical churches I would often hear (supported by scripture) direction to plan well and to plan ahead. I would hear from Proverbs and New Testament passages, even the gospels that not planning ahead can bring a whole host of trouble. At best this direction helped people. At worst it seemed to give license for some to disdain people who had come upon difficulty or who lived in chronic difficulty. (Self-righteous head shake feigning compassion that was really judgment in disguise - “They should have planned. They should have made better decisions.”) Do you see how such thinking keeps us safely separated from others? This should not be understood as a properly Christian impulse. It is not like Jesus at all to disdain people in difficulty.
We have learned a little more about what James was getting at in the warning against trusting our plans.
I think about this when I hear public health figures and politicians castigated by frustrated citizens for not getting things right. Of course our leaders should do their best to plan and to look ahead, but it remains true that no one, not even you or your friend or relative who says “what Bonnie Henry should have done …”, would have gotten us through this unscathed. I have a hunch that Bonnie Henry has done a better job than you or me, or your know-it-all relative would have done if they were the one getting up to the microphone each time a public health decision was being communicated.
Dear God, teach us humility and gratitude.
Post-final note:
People are frustrated. We are not used to having to admit that things are this uncertain. Governments and institutions are supposed to be able get us through if we just do the right thing. We know that this new variant spreads insanely rapidly and that as hospitals fill up we could experience many terrible problems. We know that health care workers are maxed out past the point of breaking. We also know that if kids can’t attend school in person there is real cost to the kids and to the parents. All of this to say, there is no entirely good way through this. In some ways we will all be brought to the point of breaking. Those who can largely avoid such breaking by means of wealth or luxury are fortunate in a way, but there is nothing new in this story of thinking that human frailty can be avoided by money and power. Some of the thoughtful and self-reflective wealthy might even tell you some of the cost of this illusion. Let’s be compassionate.
And a friendly note from me, a person who makes many grammatical errors and typos. If you are planning on attending a protest that you know will be televised, particularly if said protest will be small, please, for your sake, not mine, check the spelling on your protest sign. I feel so bad for this person. I don’t know who she is, but I try to imagine what she must be dealing with in caring for her family and working while being a single parent. Now she is faced with not being able to send her child (or children) to school and the implications for her own income. Then I also feel bad because I am confident that at some point she is going to say to herself, “Are you f*cking kidding me?! I know how to spell “triple”. What the hell happened?”
We can still try to be “all in this together”.
Blessings all.
oh man! so sorry about your covid christmas! That's rough. Also, i'll have to have you proofread all my protest signs because I'm a terrible speller! I didn't even notice that triple was spelled wrong.
Maybe the extra “p” in “triple” just clearly emphasizes this mother’s frustration.
TRIPPLE vaxed!
Todd thank you for sharing your story. Maybe you will reach someone who has not yet been vaccinated. I have to trust that having been vaccinated saved your family from an even more serious disease. What you experienced was serious enough! Scary.
Maybe some day we will be able to make sense of this seemingly senseless time in history.
Frankly, I am tired of it all and I am not alone.
This pandemic has brought us to our knees.
We don’t know the next “chapter”….but there will be one. Our God already knows.
Sending love to you and your family.
Lynda