sick, part VI

I asked how long it’d take me to feel normal again. “Well, we say under 30 six weeks, over 30, three months.” That didn’t seem fair and I was determined to be better immediately. But age betrayed me in a big way. I was nervous in the shower because sudden moves – we make them more often than we think – caused unsteadiness and I really didn’t want to be found naked in the bathtub with a broken back. Just walking out to my car exhausted me. Because I had to pay such close attention through my exhaustion, everything felt foreign, as though I were doing it for the first time with my new handicap. I’d go to the office and after an hour and a half of doddering effort I’d be done. Just done – could do no more. And I’d have to drive home very carefully so I wouldn’t have an exhaustion-caused accident. I was sick long enough for people to bring me food and send cards.

Slowly, I did push myself. I started going back to the gym and climbing baby climbs, walking on my treadmill at a snail’s pace, trying to stop watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Twice, my cardiologist (I did not want to have a cardiologist, and told him so) made me wear a holter monitor to measure my heart rate for a full day. Clean slate. I saw a rheumatologist who agreed the virus had left no lifetime scars – no arthritis, no deadly time bomb. When we went to his office for the final consult he looked at my test results and matter-of-factly said I’d had West Nile Virus. I was just a little bit stunned. The next day my own doctor called me to tell me I’d had West Nile Virus. He was disappointed to hear he’d been scooped.

West Nile Virus. I looked up more about it on the CDC website: 80% of the people who have it never even know they have it – some don’t even develop symptoms, others just have a cold. A few people die. And then, among that other 20%, some people get really sick. Like I did. I was a statistic.

I did make a full recovery, no lingering effects – a common problem with viruses, no worries about re-sicking. Here, a year later, it’s hard to imagine I was ever that ill. But boy oh boy, was I ever. A tiny little virus, an organism we have no defense against, tried to kill me. I understand how a less healthy person could have died from what I had. I felt lucky to have made it through. My symptoms were innocuous: fever, blurred vision, exhaustion. Anything else that happened to me happened invisibly. And even after I was better it still felt like something of a sham. But I became acquainted with being vulnerable and it was a frightening, aging feeling.