A post from pre-covid 2020: Ground Glass and The Mechanics of Air

Lungs aren’t like tree branches as much as clusters of grapes. The bronchioles don’t branch outward only to peter out like the narrow ends of sticks. Rather, they stop at tiny fruit-like nodules with membranes thinner than a strand of hair. This is where a deep breath of oxygen seeps into the blood stream. In lungs sickened by the Coronavirus, the membrane thickens, then thickens some more, until those breaths become weak, then blocked, and oxygen can no longer make it into the blood stream. On a CT scan the virus has a hazy look to it, like ground glass has been packed into the lower lobes of the lungs.

 Before my husband got sick, I made a trip to Walmart to buy dog food and scored Robitussin, Mucinex, Tylenol, and elderberry honey syrup. The prepper in me roamed the store looking for all manner of quackery to stave off illness; sepia potions and nut-infused compresses, lozenges touted to dissolve viral filled droplets before they reach livers and lungs. I’m a prepper at heart. Y2K was a great disappointment. I knew enough to avoid the camping aisle; we already own an emergency water filter, and I didn’t see any need for a tent. I looked for dried beans.

As I pushed my cart down the main aisle, other shoppers—conscious of the 6 feet rule—dutifully veered away like synchronized swimmers demonstrating a blooming flower.

 Rick’s cough began at night. He kept turning and plumping his pillow, and then a few shallow, cartoon-like coughs. A few more, then more. I slid closer to my side of the bed. Cough. I slid to the edge. Cough. I got out of bed, took my pillow, went to the other room, and prayed for his already damaged and asthmatic lungs. And because I’m a glass half empty girl, prayed O Lord, have mercy, don’t let my husband die of Coronavirus. I really like him. Give me at least 20 more years with him...

 The next morning he had a fever. When I came into the room, he was curled up like a conch shell under the blankets, shivering. His temperature started out an alligator cold 97.4, which puzzled me, but two hours later came in at a qualifying 99.5. Not terribly high. However, having risen by more than 2 points, if his temperature had been the normal-person 98.6 at the start, and then risen two points, it would be 100.6, which means that unless my husband is a reptile, which most days he’s not, our thermometer was wrong, which meant it was entirely possible he had COVID-19 God help us all.

 When we pulled up to the orange cones in front of the white tent a doctor dressed in hazmat was facing the car robot-like and holding a long swab at chest level with both hands. The tent flaps were pulled open on either side of him as though he should take a bow, which he was certainly entitled to. The only skin visible was his forehead, and I thought he’s got so much smarts in there and yet here he is with his patch of forehead exposed to the coronavirus like fly tape. He stared at us for a moment before pointing at my husband next to me and then immediately to the ground in front of his own paper slippers as though articulating a cogent Snap.To.

 After telling him he looked like he had Covid, the doctor told Rick to go home, sleep, drink, take Tylenol. He’ll call when the test comes back but assume you have it.

 As we drove past the doors to the clinic I thought about how we weren’t allowed in there; I wondered what would happen if we went in anyway, if we’d be wrangled to the floor or poked back out the door with the legs of a chair. We were leprous. Mother Teresa would be a fool to touch us. That afternoon a friend had texted me she’d heard of someone who had gone from a tickle in their throat to a ventilator in 15 minutes.

 Rick barely moved for three days. All I could do was take his temperature and oxygen and bring him juice. On the fourth day he began to feel better, and the next morning he woke without a fever. He got out of bed, went downstairs to his computer, and began getting caught up on work. I sat next to him, rubbed his back, cocked my head just so, smiled mildly, and looked at his face. He glanced at me, smiled, and went back to work.

            I made echinacea tea. I got a large bottle of vitamin C gummies, the elderberry syrup, Mucinex, and a large glass of orange juice, and set them on the coffee table. He took a drink of the orange juice, “It’s strange,” he said, “but suddenly I can’t taste or smell anything. Not a thing,” and went back to his computer. He looked up again, “You know, I didn’t think I was gonna make it. In the middle of the night, that first night, I thought there’s no way I’m gonna make it through this thing,” and went back to work.

 Around 4:00 his color looked off. He drank half of the tea, slowly got up, climbed the stairs, and got back into bed.  

 I left a message for the on-call doctor around 7:00. I didn’t know if I should take him to the ER. He was wheezing a little and could barely move again. He didn’t want to go; there’s nothing they can do, he said. Friends were texting that I should take him to the ER, but wouldn’t they just send him home? I had 10 tabs for Covid websites open on my computer, but I couldn’t find anything definitive. I was confused, the websites were confused; they have to have a high fever that you can’t get down; call if they have a low intermittent fever; it’s all Trump’s fault; it’s all Princess Cruise’s fault, the stockpiles are almost gone, and who even gets a ventilator?

 When he called back, the doctor went through the same CDC questions in front of me on their website. “Has he recently traveled to another country? Does he have a fever? Excuse me, I have another call.” He had a phone to each ear and I could hear him talking. When he got back he asked if I had an oximeter. I did, I had borrowed one. “What does it say?”

“It goes back and forth; 91-93.” He told me to watch his breathing and if he really started struggling to take him to the ER. “Okay,” I said, and hung up.

            He called back five minutes later. “I just looked at his file and three days ago his oxygen was a lot higher. I think you should take him to the ER.”

 As soon as the doors of the emergency room slid open a nurse wearing a mask-gown-latex-gloves, approached him with her arms straight out like he was spoiled meat and attached a mask to his face. There was a metal detector to one side, and someone pushed out a wheelchair. The nurse told me I wasn’t allowed in. Rick sat down in the wheelchair, and as he was wheeled back he looked at me over his mask. He could barely sit up.

 The body of Christ can be a tangled mess, but those tangles, when entwined in prayer, have the power of God to bring healing like Elijah’s prayers brought rain from dry air; if you’re foxhole-praying you certainly don’t mind whether the guy next to you thinks the wafer is just a wafer or flesh off of bone as long as it’s Christ who’s transformed him. In the parking lot, sitting in my car, I found a picture of Rick and posted it to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I said he had Covid-19 and I just took him to the ER. I typed please pray for my husband, and said he was struggling. No hash tags. Within seconds I got my first ping.

 There’s much I could write about his venture into the hospital; I sat in the car as my phone continued to ping while Rick shivered alone in a negative-pressure room because no one could waste a gown and mask to enter and give him a blanket; ping. Wheeled by hazmats to radiology; ping. X-rays; ping. CT scans; ping. Blood work; ping. Hazmats rolling his bed back to negative- pressure room; ping, ping. Me in the car; ping. For hours, ping. Rick curled up in the negative-pressure room; ping. For hours; ping, ping. My phone was pinging and vibrating like a frog about to jump out the door of the car.

 I was there when they pushed him back out. He looked barely there, like they’d accidentally drained all the blood out of him. There was a reem of paper on his lap and when I looked through it half the pages were blank, as though they’d run out of things to say.

 Ping.

Ping, ping...

 It’s strange how medical terms are usually long and complicated words like lymphadenopathy or arteriosclerosis, but then, as though a fourth grader named them, you listen as doctors discuss the disease in your husband’s lungs with playful words like ‘crazy paving’ and ‘ground glass.’ Are there tumors called fuzzy globules? Do simpler words denote better outcomes?

 Ping.

 Rick’s lungs were full of ground glass opacity and he had pneumonia. Ping.

 They sent him home because he could breathe. His oximeter reading wasn’t great, but he could breathe. They told me what to look for and when I should bring him back: confusion, blueish lips, very low blood oxygen level, trouble breathing. Ping, ping. All the prayers were like balls smacking bumpers in a pinball machine.  

 I’ve often thought about Ezekiel 43:2, where it says that God’s voice is like the roar of rushing waters. Sit at the base of a waterfall and listen to the infinitude of layers of water wrapped and laced synchronously, making a sound no living thing on earth can replicate. If, as it says in Revelation, our prayers reach our Father wrapped and laced with the smoke of incense, maybe they reach him like his voice reaches us; in a multitude of power and glory.

 I just now looked at how many pings I’ve gotten from the posts asking people to pray for Rick. The tally, minus the many shares and retweets, is 6,343. I realize this is not a number Beonce would be proud of, but for me it blows my mind. 

 Recovery from Covid 19 is strange and can feel like a tease. Three days after his trip to the hospital Rick got the call that he did indeed have the virus but he was too tired to even roll his eyes. The next day his fever let up and he began to feel better. He felt very good for one day then his fever came back and his oxygen levels dropped again. Two good days, then he would deteriorate. And repeat. His fever came and went. His oxygen was fine and then it would dip. I apologetically called emergency room doctors and on call doctors even though I knew there was nothing they could do. He’s felt good for a week now, but today he has a strange rash and when we looked it up, reports are coming in that one in five patients get a rash with Covid-19. He still has no taste or smell. I don’t know when Rick will have those magical antibodies swimming his bloodstream, but I know things will be okay. I don’t take lightly the prayers of the saints, and every ping from my phone was the comfort of God. We can do this; we can ask and we can surrender and we can love each other well. We are many, we are a powerhouse of prayer, we are Elijah.