THB Sidebar: Covid Comes Home

I am going to make this very brief… very brief for me, at least.

I got The COVID.

I’m 95% sure I got it at the first screening of Babylon last Monday. Perfect for a movie whose first significant image about show business is an elephant spraying diarrhea all over the people trying to help get it up the hill.

(I’m not actually that bitter and I don’t blame Paramount or the movie at all. Funny that I feel the need to soothe a movie studio while I am sick.)

It was also my first trip back to the Academy Theater since COVID started. I had a ton of in-person stuff on my schedule last week, but amazingly, I somehow skipped or cancelled it all even before I started feeling sick on Thursday.

Anyway…

The worst for it, for me, was Saturday, when I woke up with a singularly sore throat. I can’t imagine how millions of people who have had it so much worse than I have manage that discomfort. I wasn’t scared of not breathing, but stabbing pain with every swallow.

That said, every one of us emerged from a woman who put up with discomfort that made my Saturday morning look like an indulgent distraction.

Cold water and lozenges… constant… except when sleeping… only once almost killed myself by falling asleep with a lozenge in my mouth. By Sunday, my head was still feeling like it was on fire - my thermometer temperature didn’t reflect this - but I could swallow without wincing and my contribution to Kimberly Clark’s bottom line (owners of Kleenex) was measurable. I was over the hump.

Unfortunately, my wife started feeling it on Friday and my son on Saturday night. And that hurt me most of all because I knew what they had in front of them.

It’s Tuesday after 4pm. I’m still sick. They are still sick. They haven’t tested positive yet. I have. For my wife, it is a call to her skills in dealing with illness. For my son, it’s really his first encounter with this kind of sickness, knock superstition. He won’t drink as much water as would help him feel better. He won’t grab something to soothe his throat without it being handed to him. He insists he can’t swallow a Tylenol. After arguing and trying to “teach” him how to swallow, we got liquid Tylenol for adults (he’s 12, which qualifies him in TyleWorld). But mostly, we are trying to help him understand what he is feeling and how to take care of his own body when it is so challenged.

Three people, each trying to care for their loved others, but uncomfortable and quick to frustration. Each of us has surely been woken by unneeded yelling at some point in the last 4 days.

Thanksgiving is cancelled, but I’m the only one in my home who eats turkey anyway. I feel like I am abandoning my sister and niece, but they insist otherwise, so the guilt will subside.

Honestly, my biggest concern, aside from the health of the family, is the number of movies I haven’t seen in the last 5 days. Screenings and trips to the movie theater were planned. I still have a ticket for Glass Onion at a theater with real people tomorrow… but I don’t expect to clear COVID until sometime tomorrow or Thursday. And my family will still me in the midst of things. Strange World. The Menu. A few international films that had local screenings. I have seen all of Willow and Welcome to Chippendales and love both. I finished The Vow II. I finally watched Smile and X, thinking I was sick and watched the former in too many sittings to get whatever people love about it and that X was just plain classic 70s horror/softcore porn and can’t wait to see Ti West’s Pearl, which A24 is offering to voters now. I watched the Guardians Christmas special which is a joyous goofy thing.

Anyway… this is turning into a regular newsletter.

So thank you for reading... and indulging. I will be writing through the holiday when the focus and strength turn up. Working on a 2nd newsletter for tonight.

Until tomorrow…