After outrunning the virus for nearly five years, I finally got COVID — just in time for Christmas.
Finally seeing those dreaded two lines on her COVID test stick, Stacy Torres thought she’d feel different. Terror, perhaps. Certainly defeat. Instead, she feels buoyant.
Mario Tama/Getty Images 2020
And I couldn’t be happier.
This is certainly not how I expected to feel. As someone with an autoimmune disease called Sjögren’s Syndrome, I’ve spent the past five years following stringent COVID precautions long past when most people abandoned them. I single-mask outdoors when crowded, double-mask indoors when riding public transit and grocery shopping. I’ll go to a restaurant with the proviso that I space myself between tables just so and wedge myself in a corner. I’ve had more vaccine shots than anyone I know — 10, roughly two per year under guidelines for the immunosuppressed.
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So, after finally seeing those dreaded two lines on my COVID test stick, I thought I’d feel different. Terror, perhaps. Certainly defeat.
Instead, I feel buoyant.
The nightmare I’ve been trying to avoid since 2020 has happened. And with it, I’m embracing my sense of surrender and letting go of the illusion I can control everything. The timing of my infection has bestowed upon me the surprise Christmas gifts I crave during the holiday season: acceptance, peace and relief.
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It took a bit for that relief to kick in; I was hard on myself at first.
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I’m almost certain that I caught COVID at church, despite double-masking in the back row. Perhaps it happened when I sipped coffee and munched on a delicious church doughnut from Bob’s and someone infectious breathed too close. I had just started attending church again after an almost two-decade break.
Ultimately, I realized that if doughnuts and trying to get closer to Jesus were my downfall, so be it. I’m human, imperfect, flawed — and that’s OK.
Yes, I’m having a buffet of symptoms and still buckling up for a bumpy ride. COVID can worsen many of the health issues I already suffer from, including fatigue, neuropathy, dry mouth and gastrointestinal problems. So far, I’ve got a little of everything on my plate, unsure yet what the main course is. My hands hurt. Pain radiates throughout my jaw, arms and shoulders. Apparently, I may be having a heart attack. The nurse practitioner I met with during my virtual appointment, concerned about my chest pain and slight shortness of breath, kept probing, trying to figure out the severity, “When you’re walking, doing chores, does it worsen?” she asked.
“Walking? Chores? No ma’am, I’ve barely gotten out of this chair since I tested positive this morning,” I told her.
She prescribed Paxlovid and informed me of what to look out for to prompt an emergency room visit.
Fine. My autoimmune condition has long made my health one big game of whack-a-mole. Let’s add a few more moving parts. I refuse to worry.
Having reached some state of denial and zen, I’m now leaning into the pleasures of being sick. It’s a real treat. While the world is on fire outside, I’m cocooning. Alone at home, I can snot it up around my house and not worry I’m going to kill my father — who’s already dead — or my partner, who is in Germany for work.
For the first time in I can’t remember how long, I don’t have to set a wake-up alarm. The ghost of my father implores me, “Sleep, sleep, you need sleep,” as he did when alive and I had so much as a case of the sniffles. I’ve been listening, blissfully sinking into night after night of NyQuil comas.
With a smile on my face, I’m mainlining giant mugs of ginger tea with lemon and honey, alternating listening to Christmas carols with the warm company of the DJs at my college radio station, WFUV. I never expected a boppy little tune like Suki Waterhouse’s “Supersad” to give me so much strength this year, but here we are:
“Swear to God I’m over being so damned scared/ I look so much better when I don’t care.”
COVID is my adult version of a snow day. I’ve been savoring memories of sick days that I spent with Mom as a depressed eighth-grader. We watched daytime talk shows and ate ham-and-cheese sandwiches on whole wheat and glugged bright yellow Country Time lemonade. Thank goodness for that sanctioned hooky time, as my mother would get very sick the following year and die the next, officially marking the end of my childhood.
Right now, I’d rather be sick with a potentially debilitating illness than live my “real life” as a sociology professor. Try as I might on this hungry academic treadmill, no accomplishment ever feels good enough.
Instead, walking across the room and warming up a can of chicken soup is a triumph. I pat myself on the back.
Good job.
With this special event sickness, unlike my everyday state of being run-down, autoimmune unwell, I get to enjoy what normal, mostly healthy people experience during a seasonal illness that takes them down for a time. I receive well-wishes from friends and my email contacts wishing me a speedy recovery. I have good reason for going MIA for a while. Many thanks, COVID! See everyone in the new year!
Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.
My fear of catching COVID had isolated me in ways I never anticipated. I’ve lost a lot during these past five years. While I’ll continue to remain vigilant against reinfection as best as I can, given my unpredictable immune system, at least I know I can survive.
My life is a book with many chapters. It’s time for a new story.
Stacy Torres is an assistant professor of sociology at the UCSF School of Nursing and author of “At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America.”