COVID Sucks

But have you tried having a panic attack on COVID?

(The above image is from last year’s Effin’ Birds calendar and seems appropriate still. You can find this year’s Effin’ Birds calendar here).

I feel like life has been a gauntlet for the past year or so, and I keep running and getting knocked down and every time I land in the dirt someone gets a kick or two in.

Sorry if there’s a little bit of self-pity in that sentiment. I do my best to quash all self-pity the moment it emerges, but sometimes you just have to bitch about things.

What the fuck is happening right now? When will it all fucking end?

I won’t bore you with the details of my life at the moment except to say that it is rife with change, some good and some bad, and my ability to focus has been sorely tested. It has been difficult to think, let alone write.

But one fun thing that happened recently, in spite of vaccines and a booster, was COVID-19. My 11-year-old had it and tested positive and for him it was some nausea and sniffles.

I suppose it’s my history with cigarettes that made my lungs more prone to what came next. I don’t smoke anymore but I have in the past, especially when I drink. I also had a really awful respiratory sickness right at the beginning of the pandemic—in January and February of 2020—that did a real number on my lungs. They’ve never been the same.

So COVID-19, even a milder form of it, was not fun for me. I didn’t have a fever or any other cold-like symptoms. I just couldn’t breathe very well. I couldn’t yawn fully. I couldn’t catch my breath fully. I kept feeling my heart beating in my chest—too fast, too loud.

One night, I laid down and it got much worse. I was exhausted but it freaked me out and I got up and went into the kitchen and the panic attack came swirling down. I couldn’t swallow. My arms and legs tingled. I felt dizzy. I kept feeling like I couldn’t catch my breath. I kept thinking I was going to have a heart attack or just stop breathing.

Panic attacks make your brain spin out of control to the point where thoughts are coming too fast and too jumbled to really pin down.

Some of it was irrational fear. But after all this death, it was frightening and my mind went into a tailspin. Was I going to die?

There was nothing to calm me except for—and this sounds weird, I know—video games. I went out to my office and fired up Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and played some matches at 2am, and it took my mind off the fear enough to end the panic attack. Shooting people in a video game is actually sort of Zen sometimes.

I still couldn’t get a full breath. I could still hear that weird heartbeat in my weirdly compressed chest. And I knew I couldn’t lay back down because it would get worse.

But I calmed down and I went back inside and slept in my recliner. Being elevated helped and I was so tired (and doped up on melatonin) that I passed out and woke up the next day feeling better. Not all the way, but a lot better. By the next day the chest stuff was gone, I could breathe normally. I could yawn.

Days later, things are still not 100% back to normal, though. I still feel like I’m not getting quite as much air to my lungs as I should be. But the feeling of not being able to catch my breath is gone and I’m not hearing my heartbeat and my chest doesn’t feel like it’s being squashed from the inside. So that’s good!

I really don’t recommend this experience, even though it was far milder than many and didn’t result in, you know, dying. I’ve had friends who have had it recently who described it as a mild cold. This didn’t feel anything like a cold. I didn’t feel sick at all really.

Very strange. This whole thing has just been so unsettling, from the moment we heard of the virus, throughout the pandemic and the bizarro Trump years and everything else. Lockdowns and dystopic new phrases like “Social Distancing” and the shuttering of businesses and schools. The rise in alcoholism and mental health issues, the increased antisocial behavior from so many, not just online but offline as well. It’s been hard on us as a species and a society, as humans, as creatures of the earth. Parents, children, friends, lovers, some still here and some gone. Some still together and some split apart.

We shall persevere, my droogies. Now keep calm and be excellent to each other.