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For Us, This Is the Mother’s Day That Almost Wasn’t
There’s something very primal about the fear that your mother isn’t breathing; before your lungs ever tasted air, she’s the one who breathed for you.
When my household got covid, my dad, who turned 60 the day his first symptom appeared, mostly just felt like he had a cold. I, 36 and otherwise-healthy, never even felt particularly “sick.” I certainly felt weird, and as things progressed, I had severe aches, pains, and eventually some neurological symptoms that made me downright terrified… but sick?
No, I didn’t feel sick.
Only sick with worry for my mom.
We were all diagnosed in the last week of October 2020, and just two nights later, my mom — an active, 60-year-old non-drinker, never-smoker, who did hours of intensive yard work several days a week — was already in the ER. At home, she’d been running a fever for five days (often and for long stretches above 104º), unable to eat or drink anything but water, and dry-coughing so violently that she could hardly get any rest. Only because of the fact that my brother, a healthcare worker, dropped off a pulse oximeter on our porch that Friday morning did we learn she was dangerously hypoxic: even with an oxygen level so low that organ damage could have begun, she hadn’t once felt short of breath.
