I thought I’d be dead by now.
When the pandemic started in March 2020 — started in the sense we all locked down and panicked — I was certain I would be dead within the year. Not just because of the virus, but because of me: COVID arrived in the world on the heels of about a decade of declining health and massive weight gain for me. I was in bad shape, and I didn’t expect to live to 50. If the virus got me, with all my comorbidities (remember that word?) I fully expected to die. I worried what would happen to my son if that happened. And even if the virus didn’t get me, I figured the comorbidities still would anyway.
As the saying goes: I’m not dead yet.
You may have noticed some silence in these parts lately. That’s because last Monday I tested positive for COVID. Finally. But when the virus came for me, I didn’t panic. I didn’t expect to die. I expected to ride it out. And I did. What’s more, I can see my 50th birthday from here. Knock on wood, I think I might make it.
What changed? Two things:
My health. I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating. It’s possible the pandemic saved my life. It was such a massive event that all my old habits were disrupted — and that ended up being hugely beneficial to me.
As I wrote for The Week earlier this year:
I went to a sleep clinic on the night of the Iowa presidential caucuses in 2020. They discovered the obvious — I had apnea — and something unwelcome: A CPAP machine didn't really help. Then the pandemic happened. I stopped eating so much fried restaurant food and mostly gave up coffee, fell asleep on the couch a few nights doomscrolling — but in a position that seems to have propped open my airways. One day, a few months into lockdown, I had a realization: I'd been sleeping through the night. And spending my days feeling awake and energetic. It felt like a miracle. It still does.
Everything’s connected. Once I started getting sleep, I started getting more exercise — wanted it, even, desperately. Which probably aided the sleep, which aided the exercise, and so on.
Here’s the point: In 2018 I weighed in at 341 pounds. (God help me, that’s humiliating to type even now.) This morning, I weighed at 284.1 That’s still pretty effing fat! But it’s less fat than I was -- by a lot -- and the number is still trending down overall. I feel better overall than I have in years2, and more to the point ... my comorbidities aren't quite so morbid anymore.
Science. We have vaccines now. And Paxlovid. I was triple vaxxed before the virus finally got me, and I did the full course of the antiviral medicine after I got my positive test. I don’t know how much any of those things helped me, but I suspect they did — and they certainly helped my piece of mind. My illness was mild: One tough day, and then steady improvement after.
I tested negative yesterday. I’m going to ease myself back into the world slowly, just in case I end up with a rebound case. And my family, who got it after me — sorry guys — is still under quarantine.
But I’m not dead yet. Hopefully I still have a few more years left in me.
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I remember the last time I weighed 284, on the way up. I saw that number at a gym in Philly and thought I’d bottomed out. I hadn’t.
I do feel like I lost my 40s, and what should have been my prime earning years, not to mention my prime parenting years. I try not to be paralized with regret about that.