As previously noted, I’m not feeling chipper. If I’m right and it’s COVID, it’s worse than the first time I had it. I’ve never felt weaker and more precarious than these last several days. I’m lightheaded every time I stand, though it’s either less than a few days ago or I’m getting used to it. I can walk very short distances without needing a rest, but tasks that aren’t even tasks, like bending over to pick something up or bringing in a package from the porch, leave me knackered and sweaty.
If I’m wrong and it’s something worse than COVID or it won’t go away, if this becomes my new normal, I’ll be disabled or dead. A doctor will be see me on Tuesday to decide the matter, and since it’s out of my hands, I’m refusing to spend much time worrying.
Today, though, I need to run an errand to the bank, which is a two-bus trip both ways. It should be doable, but doable has become difficult in my weakened state.
Here’s what’s always been a routine trip: First, walk half a block to the bus stop, followed by a short, seated ride to an easy transfer at a stop with a bench. Then comes another, longer seated ride to my destination, and finally a half-block walk to the bank. Ain’t looking forward to those half-block walks, but, gulp, I can do it.
And then I’ll do it all again, coming home.
The real challenge will be in between, after the bank. There’s no bench and noplace to sit or lean at that bus stop, but standing for twenty minutes is beyond my newly-limited ability. Thus I’ll need to walk a very long block — it’s two blocks, I think, but without a cross-street in the middle — to a different bus stop, where there are benches. The walk is slightly downhill, and it’s in a busy neighborhood, so someone will help me to my feet if I collapse, but this’ll be my longest walk since the illness hit. I am not looking forward to any of it.
♦ ♦ ♦
After typing those six paragraphs, I fell asleep in my recliner, for a mind-bending dream that I was exploring a cool neighborhood of shops and restaurants, like the neighborhood where my bank is. In the dream, though, I had plenty of energy and strength.
A pretty lady gave me an interesting zine full of big handwriting and funny observations and beautiful pictures, and I tried reading it in a coffee shop, but a manbun man was reading over my shoulder and asking questions about me and the zine. I didn’t want a conversation so I told him to shut up, and then I woke to a horrid pain in my lower-right torso.
Oh great, a touch of appendicitis to go with the COVID. Collect all the major diseases. Fuckshit. And also, I no longer had the pretty lady’s zine. Manbun man probably has it now, damn him.
I’m not sleeping well lately, so I don’t fight daytime naps when they come, and after a few minutes of rubbing my painful pain in the torso, I fell asleep again. No dreams are remembered from the second nap, but I woke without the intestinal pain, which means I’m getting better, right?
♦ ♦ ♦
Then I got up and pulled on pants, which was exhausting in itself, and peed and tried to poop, because I don’t need to add “gotta go to the bathroom” to my list of distress for this errand.
Wearing shoes and jacket and my bus pass on the lanyard around my neck, as predicted, the journey wasn’t particularly precarious.
The half-block walk to the bank was a little embarrassing. All tuckered after fifty steps, I leaned on a shop’s inset window, breathing heavy and gathering my strength for the last few steps into the bank, until a 20-something woman who worked in the shop came out to ask, “Are you OK, mister?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m OK,” I lied. If I can lie to myself, I can certainly lie to strangers.
Inside the bank. there are tellers at a counter, and like any bank, you stand in line and wait, but these are not my best days for standing in lines. Ah, but unlike other financial institutions, my credit union always has at least one teller at a table in the lobby — and the tables have chairs. In the past, I’ve shaken my head no when a table-teller offered me a seat, but today I said yes, and sat down to withdraw money for the rent (it’s payable in cash only), plus a hundred dollars in walking around money. But I wondered whether I’d be walking around enough to need any walking-around money.
Leaving the bank, came the most treacherous part of my odyssey — the long, delicate walk past twenty small shops and restaurants along California Avenue.
A herd of necktied young white men were holding a stand-up meeting in the middle of the sidewalk. I saw them from several doors away as I emerged from the bank, and at my age and speed it took two minutes to reach them, another thirty seconds to get past them, and couldn’t they at least move to the side, not the exact geographic center of the sidewalk?
Old people and young dog-walkers had to swerve a half dozen steps out of their way to get past the standing symposium. Me, walking slowly and very near the storefronts for the stability of an occasional window sill, I didn’t have to take any extra steps to avoid the talkers, but had to pause and yield sidewalk space to people who were detouring around the talkers. And what most aggravated me was that I lacked the energy to offer to tighten their neckties, like ordinary me might’ve.
To gather my breath and strength, I leaned on a bit of blank wall space between two shops, and in the distance came a shouting, “I’m still alive!” Inwardly I smiled, but probably not on my face, as that would be too much effort.
I’m Still Alive is a skinny, homeless white guy, maybe 50, often seen in West Seattle, whose trademark is that he shouts variations on that line as he pushes his shopping cart. Sometimes he sounds happy about it, “I am still alive, woo-hoo!” and other times almost angry, “I’m still alive, damn it!”
Wheeling his cart toward me on the sidewalk, he shouted his line every five or ten seconds, and ordinary people all moved aside and looked away. I’m not ordinary, but I’ve never spoken to him either, because I’m Still Alive is a little scary in his exuberance.
Today his presence was inspirational, and I wanted to say, “Hey, I am glad you’re still alive!” And I would’ve said it, but realized I couldn’t. He might misunderstand and get angry, and I have never been less prepared for an argument or self-defense. Unable to be me, I waited silently, leaning on the wall, as he rolled past, still shouting “I’m still alive!”
Walking again, I was holding up OK. There was no real doubt I was going to make it to the Promised Bench, but it was damned difficult, not a leisurely stroll. A couple of senior citizens passed me on the inside, and I noticed that I’d been walking slowly, perhaps one-third my normal walking speed. Impulse power, as they say on Star Trek.
Many times I’ve walked these blocks in Alaska Junction, one of Seattle’s coolest neighborhoods. Usually I look in the shop windows, sometimes go inside, or even buy something at the pet supply store or the sandwich place or the ice cream shop or one of the diners. Not this time. Today there was no pleasure to be had from the local ambiance, as I moved very slowly toward the bench that I hoped awaited my butt.
A second, long break came at a bike rack, sturdy metal that held my weight at just the right height and angle to leave me actually sitting instead of leaning. There’s no god, but I thanked him anyway, because Pascal’s Wager and all, and because damn, I had needed that sit-down time.
Freshened and still alive, I stood and walked again, and made it to the intersection, where I’d have to cross to reach my bus stop. The walk sign was on, but it had been on before I got there, so it wouldn’t be a full walk cycle. Well, I can’t rush, so I leaned on a telephone pole and waited a few minutes for the next walk sign.
Turning back to survey the land I’d conquered, I’m Still Alive was gone and must’ve turned a corner, but the necktied young white men were still talking up the street and taking up the sidewalk, and I hated them with all the strength I don’t currently have.
When the light said to walk, I crossed Alaska Street and at last reached Nirvana, the mythical state of no pain, no thought, no external reality at all — bent over on a bench. It was a long wait before my bus home arrived, but there was no time, no worry, nothing but peace and acceptance and easy breathing.
The hiss of the bus’s brakes pulled me out of my trance, and I climbed aboard. With rest, I can do up to ten or fifteen footsteps without looking transparently awful, and I looked so healthy that the driver didn’t even kneel the bus for me. Looks are deceiving, of course.
The two-bus ride home was without incident, and I made it from the last bus stop to my front door without even needing to pause and rest. Like the sudden disappearance of abdominal pain, that’s more evidence that I’m beginning to recover from COVID… right?
If I’m wrong and not recovering, if this becomes my new normal, I’ll want at least a cane or a walker, perhaps a wheelchair, before running another errand like today.
‘Running,’ I wrote, because that’s the cliché — errands are ‘run’. This was an errand limped and hobbled, not run, and Tuesday’s bus ride to the doctor’s office will be another challenge… but maybe I’ll be better by then!
9/27/2025
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