The Cure for COVID

In November 2020, I became a statistic. 

November 1 was a Sunday, and I was a little under the weather. 

November 2 was a Monday, and by mid-day, I had a full-fledged cold. Over dinner, I mentioned it to my wife, the physician.

“Do you have your sense of taste?” she asked. 

I took a bite out of something, whatever we were eating at the time. 

“Shit,” I said. 

I finished my meal in the formal dining room, and slept that night in the guest bedroom. The next day was Tuesday, November 3, Election Day. How appropriate that I spent Election Day 2020 waiting in a two-hour line in a public park to get a COVID test.

After another day of isolation, I get the results: positive for COVID-19. 

Ah, 2020. What a year it was. In any other year, with the same symptoms, I would have thought nothing of my condition. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of work. It was a minor cold, I thought. I was a little sore and tired, with a stuffy nose and that annoying lack of a sense of taste. But otherwise, I felt fine. By the end of the week, I was already feeling better. (My wife took two tests, and was negative both times.) 

But for ten days or so, I was a hermit. I stayed at home, ate alone in the formal dining room, sat on the couch watching Netflix and reading. And I slept alone in the guest bedroom. But never alone. 

From almost the moment of my diagnosis, Julie knew. 

She knew something was wrong, in that way that animals do. 

She knew I needed her, then. 

While my case of COVID was mild, and I never came close to needing hospitalization or even an urgent care, there is a stress and a panic that comes with being diagnosed with a scary and new virus that brought the world to its knees. You think about the long-term problems it could cause. You fret about the unknowns, too numerous and disturbing to list. You dread the isolation, knowing you can’t even have dinner with your wife or see your friends. You fear the stigma that will come from telling people that you have COVID. Will they look at you the same way? 

For ten days, Julie rarely left my side. She spent more time on my lap in those ten days than any other ten days I can remember. Waking up in that guest bed felt disorienting every morning — but seeing Julie there quelled my fears. 

On about the tenth day, I took a second COVID test and it came back negative. My symptoms were fast improving. Within a few days, I went back to work. 

“Maybe Julie is the cure for COVID,” I say to Angela. “If doctors can figure out replicate her snuggles in a lab, this whole pandemic would be over in no time.” 

Julie has always relaxed me. Her purring has a Zenlike quality. Her very presence comforts me. When I hold her over my shoulder, I like to put my ear against her and listen to the purr. When I wake up to her on my legs, it gives me the same feeling. I don’t want to get out of bed and start the day to end these moments — but at the same time, this small act of love gives me strength to do just that.