JULY 24, SUNDAY

COVID

Finally Covid caught up with me. I felt restless and uncomfortable all night and then on Sunday morning tested myself. The day before I tested negative, but this time I tested positive.

After the 52 hour train ride from LA to New Orleans and the 23 hour ride from New Orleans to Greenville I was seated next to someone who unknowingly had Covid. I’m guessing that it was the second trip. An old woman was going home to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Then a young woman took her place, sobbing as she sat down. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong but did say as the train slowed down because of heavy winds and then stopped for two hours because a tree fell across the track that she was going to miss her connection in Charlottesville. But after the two hour delay she fell into a panic attack and insisted on getting off in the middle of the night in Aniston, where the station was closed and no one to help her. But she insisted, saying that her mother would come pick her up. I wonder if Covid was contributing to her anxiety. Finally a huge guy who had been waiting all night in Atlanta for the train to get there got on at 5 and collapsed beside me. I think one of the three gave me Covid.

It was just bad luck and then bad luck that I joined my old man’s group on Friday in McDonalds and then went out with my family for lunch the next day to Taco Heaven. I have always felt that the greatest danger of getting Covid would come from an unmasked close friend or unmasked family member. But I had never thought I would be the person to expose them.

I spent three hours on Sunday getting the doctor on call to prescribe me Paxlovid. It is five days of three tablets in the morning and three in the evening and is supposed to keep me out of the hospital, which I guess it has since I am sitting here a day later typing this post.

For thirty days I was running a risk on every Amtrak train where I sat next to an unmasked person. But it was great good luck that when I have finally gotten sick it was in my own home with children to help me and a doctor to prescribe Paxlovid and nothing that I have have to do but rest. Now, I guess, I am semi protected for awhile and need to quickly plan my next trip before my immunity runs out.