Manhattan Covid Panic
*originally posted on my other stack, Sincere American Writing.
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You never know when your life might suddenly seem to be teetering on the edge of the abyss: Especially during the Covid-19 Pandemic, where most if not all of the rules have been thrown off.
It happened one night in late April after I took a hot shower. I’d been going through a rough time the past three, four days, feeling slow, exhausted, depressed, lonely, and generally drained. For weeks prior to that I’d been doing almost amazingly well: Writing every day; going on two, three walks; connecting with close friends and family on the regular; reading books like a scholar. But then suddenly I hit a wall. And I hit it hard.
Around April 26, I started getting up early, seven AM, doing my morning routine, but then lying down in bed in the late morning, early afternoon thinking it’d be just to close my eyes for a minute, and then waking up hours later. I hated this. I’d wake up at three, four, five PM, groggy and out of it. It reminded me of being a kid, on those days when I was sick with the flu and stayed home from school, only I didn’t have flu symptoms; just extreme fatigue.
This particular night I’d passed out oddly around five PM. When I woke it was nine at night. The first thing I recall is hearing cars rushing down below out my open window on 5th Ave, the loud noise of a big-rig motor rumbling angrily past.
I walked into my kitchen and boiled water; I had a new habit, during Covid, of drinking hot water. I stood against my kitchen counter and when the steam screamed out of the spout I turned the dial down and poured the boiling water into a white mug.
I entered my bathroom and turned the shower on. I waited until it was nice and hot and then stepped in. The heat assaulted my body in the best way. It would wake me up, like always.
I turned the water off, toweled myself, and walked into the kitchen. I stepped to my office room and gazed out the window onto 5th. It was dark out, the road slick with rain. A fire truck and a paramedic van blasted then, the incredibly loud wails exploding like bombs.
That might have been an omen.
Stepping back into the kitchen, a slightly odd sensation, a tiny prick of warmth, churned in my head. Then, without warning, my heart started pounding with a ferocity I had never experienced. I was standing naked, stock-still, right in the center of my kitchen. Then a severe wave of heat flowed in a wave through my whole body, from the top of my head, through my torso, to my toes. After that my left arm started to go numb. Finally, I started to have trouble breathing.
Ok. Get your clothes on, and run to the hospital on Lenox and 136th. Right this second. Now.
No, the hospital is unsafe.
I think you’re having a stroke or this is a blood clot related to Covid; I think you might die right here and now.
I’d recently read a Washington Post article about how they were finding more and more people in their thirties who, not knowing they had the virus, were dying in their homes of strokes. Blood clots were forming around their hearts and veins.
My whole mind flooded with intense, supernatural fear. I pictured myself in a hospital with a ventilator. My parents wouldn’t even be able to see me; I’d have to say goodbye via telephone. If I was even that lucky. And that was a dream anyway: I was not in a hospital; I was alone, in my apartment, at 9:30 at night. This can’t be happening. Not now. Not like this.
I sat on the couch in my office, my heart pounding still, struggling to get full breaths. I stared out the window as I had five minutes before, only now 5th Ave was empty. It seemed to be a road that led alive people to places where they did alive, human things. I was going to be one of those statistics of people that croak in their own home.
I had grabbed my cell phone without even realizing it. I dialed my mom. She was once a public health nurse for many years. Growing up she’d always been my source concerning what to do when panicked or sick.
“Honey?” She said, concerned already. I never called randomly like this, and especially not at this time.
“Mom, I think I might be dying. Struggling to breathe. Heart racing.”
“Ok. Michael,” she said, in that tough, practical tone she used when she needed to get shit done. I was relying on that tone and toughness right now. “Are you sitting?” She said.
I took in a big breath of air, as much as I could. I said, “Yes.”
“Ok,” she said. “Take long, slow breaths. Try to calm down.”
I put her on speaker and placed the phone on my thigh and I tried. I did this for a minute, then two. I noticed my right hand was shaking badly. Slowly, my heart began to slow, a little bit, then a little more.
“Ok,” I said. “It’s a little better now.”
“Michael,” she said. “I want you to hang up and call your neighbor. Someone needs to know what’s going on in case something bad happens.”
“Ok,” I said.
“Call me back immediately.”
“I will,” I said.
I hung up and called Candace, two floors down. We helped each other out. I told her what was happening. She ran out to Duane Reade and, twenty minutes later, she dropped two bags at my door filled with an ear thermometer, apples, oranges, bottled water, Eucalyptus, etc.
I called several other friends. Someone—I can’t remember who—gave me an 800 Coronavirus NYC hotline number. As I started to dial the number, a new wave of heat ran down my body again. Oh, no, I told myself. Not again. Please, not again.
I dialed. I told the woman my symptoms. She told me it did not sound like Covid but that if I thought I was having a stroke I should get to a hospital.
My brain was foggy. I called Isabel, from my writing group, texting first that something had happened. She was incredible, calming me down. She told me about her experience going through what she’d been certain was Covid weeks back.
After I got off I sat on the edge of my bed for a while, my eyes closed. My heart had slowed. The heat was gone. My hand was not shaking. I could breathe easier, though I was still not getting totally full breaths.
“Ok,” I told myself. “I think you’re alright.”
My phone rang. Mom. I picked up.
“Michael what the hell is going on?”
“What?” I said.
“It’s been 45 minutes; you were supposed to call me back!”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m sorry. My brain is not quite right. I feel foggy and a little confused. I can’t think straight.”
I filled her in on the calls, and on what the Covid hotline lady had said. She told me to sleep.
I checked my temperature: 98.2. I checked it several more times over the period of an hour. All normal.
I laid in bed and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. The plan was to get an appointment with my doctor first thing in the morning. I read the New Yorker for a while, then listened to a podcast. Finally, around 3am, I passed out.
I woke the next morning at seven-thirty. As I stepped into the kitchen another heat wave ran through my body and my left arm went slightly numb. I stopped, starting to panic. No, please, not again.
But it passed and I was fine.
At 10:40am I talked to my doctor via Face Time. We’d done a physical just two months ago and all had been healthy. I told him everything that happened, including the back-story of exhaustion, the over-use of caffeine, even at night, the constant ice cream, the walks and middle-of-the-day sleeping, the heavy carb diet, the lack of fruit and vegetables the past week, the loneliness and depression.
He smiled and said, “You look and sound fine. You’re young. You don’t have a fever or chills or a loss of taste or smell. It’s not Covid. You, my friend, had your first, and I’d venture to say pretty severe, panic attack.”
I remembered those minutes last night, standing in the kitchen, perched on the couch in the office, looking out the window onto rain-slicked 5th Ave, feeling certain that I was going to die, 3,000 miles away from my family, alone and scared. I pictured again being in the hospital, on a ventilator, a doctor calling my folks and saying, “I’m so sorry, but your son has passed.”
But I hadn’t passed. I was very much alive.
And I knew then how precious life was. How glorious, to just hear my softly beating heart, to talk to a friend or family member, to feel sad and scared and alone even.