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It was looking like a smooth-sailing Saturday, so I announced to my wife and father-in-law that I would be availing myself of the newly legalized practice of “eating weed.” “I’ll be having an edible and a beer, then spending the afternoon on the patio communing with the birds. Y’all have fun volunteering at the homeless shelter.” I went back to my studio, popped an edible from the stash I had procured a fews days prior, grabbed my guitar, then headed back through the living room to begin my journey. On passing my wife I noticed she was coughing, and she remarked that she woke with a headache earlier in the morning. My father-in-law suggested that she test herself for covid once they got to the shelter for their afternoon shift. About an hour or so later, just as the edible was taking effect, my wife texted me to let me know she had tested positive. She said that she would be bringing a test home for me to take, and that she would need me to pick her Dad up later on, at the end of his shift. I was immediately hit with a wave of regret for having already fully committed myself to an altered state of consciousness for the remainder of the day. When my wife returned home, she quickly scooted past me back to the master bedroom to begin her five days of quarantine, but not before handing me the covid test and saying, “The directions are pretty self-explanatory.” I think she was so caught up in her anxiety about having covid that she forgot I was baked out of my gourd. This was definitely not a good time for me to have to navigate my way through a covid test, although I eventually found a way through and tested negative. About an hour later it was time to drive across town to pick up my father-in-law, but I was “peaking” at that point, so I told my wife that we should look for other options. She was clearly annoyed, as if it were irresponsible of me to incapacitate myself on this of all days. I thought about throwing caution to the wind, but since I have no experience driving high, I was not about to make it two regrettable decisions in a row. Someone ended up giving my father-in-law a lift home.

As one can imagine, I didn’t enjoy a chill time on the patio with the birds. There was too much stress and anxiety in the air. Fortunately my father-in-law and I remained negative for covid for the remaining few days of his visit. Since my wife was quarantined in the master bedroom and my father-in-law had the guest room, I was crashing on the floor of my studio. On the morning of his departure, my father-in-law woke with a hoarse voice and a runny nose. I was relieved that he tested negative, so that he could get the bloody hell out of my house and to the airport, but I was not surprised when he called the next day to announce he tested positive for covid. It was just a matter of time at that point and, sure enough, I tested positive a few days later.

Presently, I am in day three of quarantine, and after a rough day two of body aches, chills, coughing and a wicked headache, it seems I’ve turned the corner toward recovery. This is the first time I’ve been sick since I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which was just before the pandemic hit. Blood cancer patients have had particularly bad outcomes with covid, so I’ve been feeling a palpable lack of confidence in my immune system’s capacity to carry me through. So far, it seems as if my leukemia is sufficiently “early stage,” and so it’s not having the impact on my immune functioning that I feared. There was only one way to find out, and it was bound to happen eventually.

Since I have the week off from work, I figured “Why not set up a Substack?” And so here we are.  Why bother? Who knows. I’m always searching for inspiration to get on a fresh roll, and perhaps this will do the the trick.