In which I’m currently quarantined.

This entire post is tl;dr but I’m going to write it anyway because I’ve got nothing but time for the next 3 to 7 days.

Wednesday I woke up, felt fine, got dressed, packed up my stuff, and was making a sandwich to take to work when I had that sensation that means I’ll be needing a bit of time on the toilet, if you know what I mean, but I was also supposed to be leaving for work in minutes, so I texted everybody to let them know I’d be a bit late.

And it went downhill from there. Fast. Cramps, nausea, aches, chills, diarrhea. Two hours later I gave up hope and texted to say I wouldn’t be in. By mid-evening I felt fine, and the next day I went to work.

Thursday was a little low-energy, but otherwise perfectly normal. Didn’t think anything of it. Too many Del Taco burritos, too much wine, just normal weird gut behavior, who knows.

Friday I woke up at dawn feeling normal but annoyed, because waking up these days often means staying up and not getting back to sleep before having to go to work. Then I got a headache, but did manage to drift off, so thought it’d be gone by the time I had to get up for work.

It wasn’t gone. It was splitting, and I had aches and nausea too. But not that bad, really, so I got up and got dressed and packed my stuff and left for work.

And turned around two blocks later and came home and called out sick again because my fucking head was killing me and I honestly felt really gross.

When he got home he told me it sounded like Covid-19 and that he’d sleep in the living room. I checked the CDC site and lo: diarrhea and chills are now symptoms. I emailed work that I’d be out yet again, and that I’d call the doctor the next day (because that sounds like the responsible thing to do when you work in a food manufactory during a global pandemic). I slept even more.

Well, I have a dental appointment on Tuesday, and I REALLY WANT TO KEEP IT. I was going to make it back in March — even filled out all the paperwork — but there was the pandemic, see, so I didn’t actually make one until three weeks ago. But they’d fucked up somehow, so I didn’t get seen and they never called me to reschedule like they said they would so when I called them three days later the next open slot was Tuesday. So it’s an appointment three weeks in the making, and my mouth is a disaster and I WANT TO KEEP IT.

But I also know they’ll ask me if I’ve had any symptoms, and I have, so I decided to call the clinic and ask them if they thought I needed testing. Because I only have 5 symptoms on a list of 11, and none of them are fever or cough, I thought they’d say no, sounds like the crud, drink fluids, rest, etc etc.

But what she actually said was, “With those symptoms, I’d say you need to be tested for Covid-19.” And then she told me where to go to get tested, which is at the Fast-Track drive-through at Providence.

So I went.

And it took over half an hour but was otherwise relatively easy, and they gave me paperwork and told me I’m quarantined until I get my results… in three to seven days. I’m not cleared to work before then.

And I’m also NOT CLEARED TO TAKE MY DENTAL APPOINTMENT, and have to call and reschedule.

Today I’m not that sick, just fatigued (which honestly I think is related more to my gum disease than anything else) and intermittently nauseous and headachey. The diarrhea only lasted a day (though that’s certainly long enough), with maybe a reprise Friday morning but it’s hard to tell because I was much more concerned with the blinding headache.

My mouth, though: I have gum disease. I used to get prophy three or four times a year but I haven’t had a cleaning in over six years now, for various reasons, most of them laziness. (I did try to see dentists in Minneapolis, but it was always hard finding one I could get to easily, without busses or Ubers, and then the one I could bike to didn’t take my insurance and wanted me to pay cash, plus weather and work schedules and blah blah blah… I just haven’t been seen in too long.) Which is to say that there’s bacteria in my jaw bones now. They burrow town into your sockets and down the roots of your teeth and into your upper and lower jaw bones, and I know I’m there because I can feel it. I get intermittent gland swelling, too. I need goddamned planing & scaling and they’ll probably put me on antibiotics, too.

This is all gross, I know, but that’s the joy of being embodied, right?

Long story short, we need my test not to be positive, because if it is, it basically shuts the entire creamery down for ten days while everybody gets tested, and that would be awful, plus it’ll push my dental appointment back even further.

All I wanted was my fucking dental appointment! I don’t know why I’m sick and I don’t feel bad enough to really worry, it’s just the crap you get from time to time. I’ve been sick about every two months since we moved out here, and that’s always normal for me: move across the country, catch absolutely everything for the next 10-12 months. Happens every single time. But I gotta say, during a pandemic it’s complete bullshit!