Covid, leaving facebook and gratitude for vaccines

So this is it, after two plus years, it finally happened. I’ve got covid. I caught it from fully vaccinated people, who, last I heard, aren’t sure where they picked it up. I tested positive on Sunday, but I’ve been sick since early Saturday morning.

I deactivated my facebook account a few weeks ago. It happened for a variety of reasons, and suddenly the timing was right. And now, now I wonder what would happen in that space if certain people in my life heard that I’ve tested positive. Would there be compassion? Maybe. But I can’t help wondering how much of an undertone of “I told you so” there would also be.

I’m triple vaccinated. I’ve gotten quite ill for 24-36 hours with all three doses, felt miserable, rued the vaccine, but never regretted my choice to be vaccinated. I don’t regret it now. Science proves that the vaccine dramatically reduces chance of serious illness. That’s important to me, as someone who has struggled with bad lung infections in the past. Lung infections that had me coughing so much and in so much pain that we did x-rays to check for broken ribs. There weren’t any, just badly sprained muscles, but enough to cause severe pain when I coughed or breathed.

I’ve been fortunate, because of those doses of vaccine, that thus far my course of illness has been quite mild. I felt terrible yesterday, with a high fever and aching muscles and joints, but medication helped, and the fever broke in the night, and today I’ve had the energy to begin to contemplate just how much time there is to fill when you are isolated alone in your basement suite for five days or longer.

Today I missed facebook for the first time, because it’s a good time filler, and I was feeling just well enough to be bored. It’s absolutely the right choice for me to not be there. Especially since there’s a new policy at work where if a caller asks, we have to provide our last name. My instagram is more circumspect – it has my name, but there aren’t the other identifying and locating details that Facebook lent itself to. Mostly though, my thoughts have been more peaceful since I left there, and that’s something worth paying attention to for me. You can still find me on Facebook messenger, but not on Facebook itself, and I kind of love that.

I’m thankful, today, for peaceful thoughts. I’m thankful for leaving facebook, and for a relatively mild thus far course of covid infection. I’m taking precautions to protect others until the full ten day infectious period has passed. And I’m grateful that my biggest problem at the moment is figuring out how to fill the long days of isolation I’ve got left in front of me, as I start to feel more and more recovered.