COVID diary days 5–7

My COVID-19 infection and isolation experience, continued. (Previous posts: days 1–2, 3–4)

November 2

…and I woke up at noon, to my son shaking me. Apparently my family wanted me to do a quick vitals check.

Numbly I stuck my finger in a tiny pulse-ox device and let Owain scan my forehead. How did it get to be noon? How did I sleep… 12 hours?

I don’t think I woke up at all through that vast swamp of sleeping. My body just dove down deeply into rest and didn’t choose to return me to the daylight world. I would easily have continued, had Owain not intervened. My dreams were clear and … not terrible.

In the afternoon I did emails, then took in a webinar hosted by one friend (Matt Alex) and starring another (Paul LeBlanc). Next, more research. None of this required physical activity beyond typing, staring, listening, and paying attention.

In the evening, I wound myself down, unlike my usual nighttime burst of activity. Typically after dinner I do rounds of emails, housework, class prep, research, and conversation. This night I needed to rest instead. So I settled into bed with The Peripheral streaming from one laptop tab. Next to my a nice collection of Graham Greene stories waited on the Kindle. Owain played a game on his machine (the excellent-looking Return of the Obra Dinn).

I imagined my immune system battling in every squishing cubic inch of my body, rooting and destroying virus after virus. I further envisioned that…