I got my first symptoms on Sunday, August 20th, the last day of our four day celebration of my mom’s 85th birthday in New York City.

It was a long flight home with what I hoped was just a bad cold. By the next day I tested positive for Covid.

It is the weirdest dang disease which hit me with ridiculous speed. By Monday morning, I had every symptom in the book: coughing, congestion, sinus headache, tension headache, swollen glands, fever, incontinence, vomiting, diarrhea, joint pain, backache and extreme fatigue.

Every liquid in my body found the fastest way out. Every white blood cell erupted in fury.

The symptoms lasted for a month. Not at the intense level of the first 24 hours, thankfully, but each week seemed to bring a new variation on the Covid theme. Each time thought I was getting better, the Covid demons would reach into their bag and assemble a new sequence of symptoms.

The oddest symptom was the weird contentment I felt for much of the first week. My mind was completely stuck in the present. When I tried to remember something, I could only recall short clips. I couldn’t think into the future at all, as in, not even from lunch to dinner. So, I shrugged, and sat on the couch, and, for a few days, simply took each moment as it came.

I might miss that particular symptom.