He starts with the question he is being asked: "Are you recovered yet?" People want to hear "Yes" or "I'm fine now." His lesson is that people do not magically recover from COVID-19 to "normal." He details the slow stages in his recovery to the present point before offering this advice:
This parallels my experience during the last months. Yes, it was wonderful to be told I was not, after all, riddled with cancer but merely had Valley Fever and a good right eye turned brown (and, still, maybe cancerous), and even better to find that the anti-fungal drug for VF was helping the eye. But the stages of progress have not been steady. Vision enough for reading returned fast, but the brown film remained for many weeks. Now it is a light gray film, and there is no doubt that the eye is almost "normal" and the prospect is that my vision will be what it was before Valley Fever--which means great eyesight (by my standards!) thanks to intraocular implants made 4 years ago. That is the hope. But in the rejoicing that I was not after all riddled with cancer no one warned that Valley Fever is a serious illness that puts a lot of victims to bedrest. I have been blaming the Fluconazole for being wiped out for hours a day, but it may just have been the FV. Recovery is slow, slow, and now retarded with a persistent blood clot. But very gradually I am a little stronger. The caregiver notices that I load the dishwasher and even scrub pans now. I now can take strenuous walkabouts on the main floor, which means climbing two steps into the kitchen and one down into the dining room and one more down into the living room and around to two up into the kitchen for a full repetition.
From 1978 to 2016 I ran three and a half miles than two miles every day, almost, and from 2016 to early 2020 was walking two miles almost every day. What more recovery will there be? There is a long haul ahead with the FV and with the blood clot, but maybe in a few days I can go to work on a box of printouts for Ornery People. A maniacal depot agent on the KCS in 1952 made me (the telegrapher) and the black assistant load the trunk of his car every night with ledgers and the adding machine so he could work at home. The next morning Bob Sibley and I unloaded the ledgers and the adding machine none of which he had touched. I put the Ornery People box out upstairs several days ago and took it down today, untouched. But I think the day will come soon when I am far enough along in recovery to work again. Meanwhile, David Lat says what needs to be said about recovery. Don't say how happy you are that we are well. Instead, what we want to hear is something like, "It's good that you are making progress, however slow it is."
"The next time you chat with someone who had a serious case of COVID-19, try asking, 'How's your recovery going?' instead of 'Are you recovered yet?' For all too many of us, the answer to the second question is either 'no' or 'I don't know'--and when that will change is anyone's guess."
This parallels my experience during the last months. Yes, it was wonderful to be told I was not, after all, riddled with cancer but merely had Valley Fever and a good right eye turned brown (and, still, maybe cancerous), and even better to find that the anti-fungal drug for VF was helping the eye. But the stages of progress have not been steady. Vision enough for reading returned fast, but the brown film remained for many weeks. Now it is a light gray film, and there is no doubt that the eye is almost "normal" and the prospect is that my vision will be what it was before Valley Fever--which means great eyesight (by my standards!) thanks to intraocular implants made 4 years ago. That is the hope. But in the rejoicing that I was not after all riddled with cancer no one warned that Valley Fever is a serious illness that puts a lot of victims to bedrest. I have been blaming the Fluconazole for being wiped out for hours a day, but it may just have been the FV. Recovery is slow, slow, and now retarded with a persistent blood clot. But very gradually I am a little stronger. The caregiver notices that I load the dishwasher and even scrub pans now. I now can take strenuous walkabouts on the main floor, which means climbing two steps into the kitchen and one down into the dining room and one more down into the living room and around to two up into the kitchen for a full repetition.
From 1978 to 2016 I ran three and a half miles than two miles every day, almost, and from 2016 to early 2020 was walking two miles almost every day. What more recovery will there be? There is a long haul ahead with the FV and with the blood clot, but maybe in a few days I can go to work on a box of printouts for Ornery People. A maniacal depot agent on the KCS in 1952 made me (the telegrapher) and the black assistant load the trunk of his car every night with ledgers and the adding machine so he could work at home. The next morning Bob Sibley and I unloaded the ledgers and the adding machine none of which he had touched. I put the Ornery People box out upstairs several days ago and took it down today, untouched. But I think the day will come soon when I am far enough along in recovery to work again. Meanwhile, David Lat says what needs to be said about recovery. Don't say how happy you are that we are well. Instead, what we want to hear is something like, "It's good that you are making progress, however slow it is."
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