At times I go back and parse
The pain, the bone-deep ache
The fever, chills, fatigue
The way it felt like constant, relentless muggings committed by tiny, unseen assailants
No hunger
A brief sense of being untied from all ordinary things
As though powerlessness could be construed as
Super-heroic
At first I thought it was my age, that some magic threshold of peri-menopausal bliss had been breached and entered and that the clumps of hair went with the hot flashes and wrinkles. Then a survivor 20 years my junior told me she was struggling with hair loss and it occurred to me that perhaps it was one more Covid peculiarity?
I think I am handling it well. I have trimmed the remaining locks by inches and let its spun lightness rule the day.
I am alive
He walks into every room looking for someone who might comprehend
what it is
he has seen and heard
He weighs their solemn waiting-room-faces
Do they have
Better memories now? Do they still need to write things down or
Know every word by heart?
Are all the lambs among them and
can we see their scars?
Who can end this waiting
By calling us out
Out into life
Around Thanksgiving I got Covid. I work in a doctor’s office, so eventually all of our staff got the disease as did our immediate family.
Symptoms and severity sorted out by age. The youngest two had the mildest symptoms, the oldest–me, ended up in the ER for a day, facing a diagnosis of damage to my heart and lungs.
First, let me say, that I am mending. I am the recipient of miracles and healing.
But the 24 hours leading up to the ER visit were really scary. The day in the ER was a gift. The oxygen machine they sent me home with was a gift.
And my current pulse, O2 stats, and general health–belong to the grace of my Ransomer.
Jesus gave me miracles, as He has done my whole life.
Covid is a really scary disease. It leaves some scars. It leaves fear and memory of the pain and uncertainty.
But Jesus is bigger than mountains. Jesus is bigger than tiny killer viral agents.
And Jesus never walks away from us.
I know I have been saved and given the gift of my life back.
I will do what I can to praise the One who saved me.
And I will use these beautiful lungs to pray for all of us.
That we feel him there with us,
No matter what.
I have never been a roller coaster girl. Too queasy, but these days the ride is all mental grit and actuarial tables–I stop in the credit union parking lot just as the preacher on the radio quotes Jesus–ask anything in my name and I will give it to you!
Ok, God, I tell Him, make those doctors brave
Could substitute kind, generous, humble, compassionate
Feels impossible, I tell Him then
He reminds me
Impossible
Is His specialty.
I read this article today about how a hospital in Texas is deciding to handle rising numbers of Covid patients.
The entire article is alarming, but one thing struck me–thousands of miles away?
The entire state of Texas is not thousands of miles across from end to end any way you look at it.
While there are far-reaching and devastating consequences for everyone involved when people in need of care are summarily left to die and refused care,
I am also not sure how I feel about being told that there is not one place in Texas that will take very sick patients, the fragile and the dying.
Maybe we need to talk about that.
In what may come as a surprise to very few, the top ten riskiest jobs in terms of possible COVID-19 exposure are patient-facing roles in healthcare.
— Read on blog.healthjobsnationwide.com/10-healthcare-roles-top-riskiest-list/
I might as well be a canine companion
In this ritual of carefulness
Wash the shoes, spray them with bleach, stuff the scrubs into the drum of the machine, always use extra detergent
Spin out
Then dry on the line
Everything sanitized
In this intense, summer light
Like a time traveler, Lazarus returns, sits with me on the steps of the old San Antonio house
We hug our knees together, the way children do
I tell him my losses
And he tells me his founds
–you never forget the way
Dim shadows turn to light.
