Questions after a week with Covid: one disease, two experiences

This time last week I was recovering from Covid. I had tested positive the previous Saturday after I learned that Evelyn and a dozen or more other residents at Artis had also just tested positive.

What did she have?

Before that, we thought she just had a bad cold. But then there was a recurring fever, and she was very lethargic. They thought maybe a sinus infection had set in. But when several others were showing similar symptoms, they decided to test for Covid, and we had our answer.

I had visited her most days that week, feeling her forehead, wiping her nose (she’s forgotten how to blow it herself), giving her water. Friday night my own runny nose and cough told me I was catching her cold. Instead, I caught something worse.

My symptoms weren’t critical, but they weren’t pleasant. I had no energy, little appetite, and a slight fever. I felt like I was walking around under a weighted blanket. For two days the raw sore throat was the most severe I’ve experienced, made worse by a cough from my chest.

How did she feel?

“If your mom felt anything like this, I’m not surprised she seemed so unresponsive,” I told my son who called me in the middle of it.

“But she couldn’t tell you how she feels,” he remarked, touching on a thought I’ve had again and again.

So often I’ve wished I knew what’s going on in her mind. When she was home, sometimes it seemed I was constantly redirecting her: telling her which drawer to find the spoons, leading her from the couch back to bed in the middle of the night, telling her not to fiddle with the alarm hanging on the front door, asking her to sit down so she wouldn’t fall. One evening I found her trying to climb into the soaker tub in the bathroom.

“No, no, no!” I said as I rushed toward her in a panic.

I remember writing then, “What must it be like constantly to be told I’m not doing it right?”

And this week I wondered how it must feel sitting with fever and pain with no way to tell anyone what’s wrong.

My support group leader said we shouldn’t ask our patient, “Do you hurt someplace?” They likely can’t sort out an answer. Instead, be specific. Ask, “Does your stomach hurt? Does your throat hurt? Do you have a headache?”

But even if we had asked those questions, we wouldn’t have been able to discuss, “Do you think you might have Covid?”

What does she think?

Evelyn’s talking less and less these days. She says random words or phrases. Last week my private-pay aides told me she spoke our daughter’s name one day, and mine another. She remembers us, but we don’t think she knows us.

She reads headlines from whatever magazine or catalog we’ve put in front of her. Sometimes she finds the small print in one corner and repeats it aloud, again and again, a sentence most readers would ignore.

She’ll answer yes or no to simple questions: “Do you need to go to the bathroom?” “Would you like a drink of water?” “I love the flowers in that picture. Don’t you?”

How can we respond?

Saturday I found her in bed when I arrived late in the afternoon. She was out of isolation by then, but she had been resting her head on the table, asleep, after lunch, so they took her to her room for a nap.

I sat in a corner and found a favorite hymn track to play on my phone. Her eyes fluttered open, and I got on my knees to talk to her face-to-face. Sometimes I sang a phrase from a hymn, looking for recognition from her.

Once, back in my chair, I looked across the room and my eye seemed to catch hers. She offered a fleeting smile, a welcome gift, but it brought me to tears.

We will be satisfied with fleeting recognition, positive responses, any bit of interaction we can coax. And if she seems not to feel good, we’ll keep guessing at what’s wrong.

I can’t know what she thinks of all this. But we hope she knows we love her.