I’m not necessarily worried that I won’t survive. I am very worried that I’ll never be the same again.

It’s difficult to explain to people and I’m not sure how to do it more effectively. We’ve gotten a lot better at treating this virus, which is evidenced by the fact that even though numbers are spiking again, deaths are not spiking at the same rate. That’s good. Progress is good. I’m still going to wear my mask, social distance and wash my hands and I’m still not comfortable going to a restaurant, bar or theatre.

Me collecting an award after a race (2019) being all ‘young’ and ‘healthy.’

We’re all tired of discussing COVID. We’re all tired of living this year. But I am writing about this, because certain exchanges that I’ve been having over and over EXHAUST me, and in this format at least, I can talk without being interrupted.

I’ve had many conversations, with people close to me and people I don’t know well, who are surprised by how careful I am. “You’re so healthy! You wouldn’t get it.” “You’re young, you’d be fine.” I hear these things frequently.

Now, I don’t think we have time to unpack ALL of that, but there are two points that I want to address.

Part of my care, which I do not think is extreme, is out of concern for others that I come into contact with. I have had contact with only a few people since this started and have only three people in my ‘pod.’ Two of whom are my parents who are both over 70. Now, they might get the virus somewhere else, but I sure as hell don’t want to be responsible for bringing it to them.

I also personally know some very very careful people who both contracted the virus. One of them is pretty sure that she got it from someone in her pod who is a restaurant employee. The other has no idea how she got it. Both went into quarantine and were able to keep from infecting their roommates/significant others. One was completely asymptomatic the entire time and only took the test as a safeguard because she was thinking about traveling somewhere, and yes, the antibodies showed up for her later, it was not a false positive. The other experienced all the typical symptoms, although she was able to manage it at home, and still feels extremely fatigued even though the virus is gone.

This is the last time I was sick. I had the stomach flu.

All this to say that this isn’t just about me getting sick, this about who else I might unknowingly infect.

The other point I would like to make is that I’m not necessarily worried that I wouldn’t survive. The odds are good that I would recover. I’m worried about becoming a long-hauler. I have asthma. It’s very well controlled because I’m in good shape and I work hard on my cardio endurance. That doesn’t mean I don’t ever feel it. In fact allergy season isn’t great because I’ll often wake up coughing. Recently I woke up from a dead sleep unable to breathe and stumbled into the living room where my husband was still awake and scared the crap out of him because he had never seen it before. Logically, I knew that I was going to be okay, I was still pulling some air in, I just needed to get the spasm under control, but it’s still terrifying.

This used to happen to me occasionally when I was little (years before being diagnosed with asthma in high school because of problems catching my breath in track practice). I would wake up gasping and unable to breath. Usually my mom would magically appear, moms have a sixth sense for these things, and whisk me off into the bathroom and run all the taps on hot, filling it with steam until things opened up. (To learn more about this fun condition, type “laryngospasm” in your search bar and see what comes up.)

So, I know what it feels like to be unable to draw breath. It’s horrifying and I do not want to die that way. Whenever people ask those ‘getting to know you’ questions about hypothetical adventures you might want to experience, I always nix scuba diving and space travel. I am not interested in being in any environment where oxygen is not readily available to my lungs. Even hypothetically. I am not interested in getting COVID and surviving and doing a ‘herd immunity’ thing. I am not down for that.

I went snorkeling with sea turtles on our honeymoon. This is the most I will do. No scuba diving. No space travel.

I have no problem with wearing a mask in public places anywhere that I’m inside and cannot socially distance. When I’m teaching yoga, I often move around the room to demonstrate poses. I put on my mask and time my words so that I can breathe. Is it more difficult? Yes. Does it cause me panic? No. Because all I have to do if I get into trouble is get ten feet away from everyone and pull my mask off until I catch my breath. I’m not going to be able to just pull a ventilator off if I end up with one.

One very big fear is what happens after survival. There are countless stories of very healthy, athletic people catching this virus and dealing with it for months after they are ‘cured.’ People who were running marathons before unable to jog down the block. And we still don’t know what happens to them eventually. Will they never recover? Is this their life now? Will they recover in a year or two and be okay? Will their lives be severely shortened? We don’t know.

So yeah, I’m very healthy and relatively ‘young’ and I’m going to be extra careful. Because I don’t want to go down like that and I don’t want to be the cause of anyone else going down like that either.

Yes, death concerns me, but so do aspects of survival