On March 8th I went home on my lunch break and took a full hour nap.

On a March 10th my throat burned when I breathed, and I started coughing. The cough was deep, and felt like your knees do when you fall and scrape them on cement. I worked the full day used the sani-wipes to kill my cube and went home. I called out for the following day not long after I got home.

I called my mom that night and her that it felt like someone had taken a strap around my lower ribs and was slowly tightening it. I coughed when I talked.

On March 11th I went to the nice urgent care by the office, I work leggings and a denim shirt because I could. My blood pressure was 207/148, so high that the nurse in her 50s was stoic and ashen. The tested for flu which I had been vaccinated for and told me to brace for a high fever. My blood pressure was 190/110 the second time they took it. They didn’t call an ambulance or have me sign myself out AMA. I went home. I text my boss I wouldn’t be in the next day.

The high high fever never came but I would have short, low fevers like clockwork two time a day (I wasn’t checking at night). When I talked on the phone I’d cough so hard if end up retching.

My boss asked me not to come in on the 15th, he wanted to prepare the department to test working from home. I agreed though I was feeling 90% better.

On March 15 at 7:30 PM my entire body became pink like a boiled lobster and the chest pain stopped improving and was static. I had a fever of 101 degrees F.

On March 16th I picked up my computer from an empty office. Took it home and worked while sitting on the floor so I could rest my head on the coffee table for what was probably hours of my work day but I had meetings.

This went on until March 24th. It all blurs together. My check hurt so bad it would wake me in the middle of the night. My pulse oximeter read in the smoker to sick smoker range with the occasional dip into below normal. My resting pulse was in the 120s. I worked and slept.

On March 25th I didn’t have a fever.

On March 28th I walked to the mailbox and back without a racing heart.

I started walking, then running a little. It still hurts to breath deeply today, at the end of April.

Today, as I start my seventh week at home alone, after signing up for multiple COVID-19 studies, I opened Facebook to find a post by my aunt.

On April 22nd I learned that I was not one of the people with COVID-19 who couldn’t get tested or a call back from their doctor when things weren’t getting better because COVID-19 isn’t real.

On April 22nd I learn that COVID-19 is a hoax to discredit an amazing American President.

I think I owe millions of people, if not billions of people and apology. I’m sorry for feeling the pain and coughing. I’m sorry that I tossed my clothes after discovering the gross and shameful gastric symptoms of the hoax that no one talks about instead of wearing them proudly. I’m sorry I took your jobs. And I’m sorry I have forced you to be stuck in your house trying not to die a horrible death like the economy.

Most of all I’m sorry I bought into the media’s hype. It’s just the flu or something.

Go fuck yourself Aunt Susan.