Sam Seaborn : You wrote a concession?

Toby Ziegler : Of course I wrote a concession. You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?

Sam Seaborn : No.

Toby Ziegler : Then go outside, turn around three times and spit. What the hell’s the matter with you?

This is from a scene in an episode of the West Wing, one of my all-time favourite TV shows. It’s election night, and President Bartlet’s staff are waiting for the call to be made. His communication director, the ever-curmudgeonly Toby Ziegler, is admonishing his deputy, Sam Seaborn, for making any sort of prediction or assumption about the outcome of the election, even though the President is a shoo-in for his second term. 

I get it – the idea of jinxing things is one of those superstitions that many of us hold close. I believe in science and evidence and research and nothing else, but even so, I throw salt over my shoulder, tap the table (or my head) and say ‘touch wood’ anytime I predict or claim something positive is going to happen. 

This introduction is purely to lay the foundations for a lot of tapping on wooden doors and tables, throwing salt over my shoulder, wearing an evil eye charm, and making the ‘cornuto’ sign (Italians will know…) at my laptop at the end of each sentence, because I am sure that by the end of the week (if not sooner), this post will not have aged well at all.

But anyway, here goes…

COVID has made its way to Casa Diabetogenic. We’ve spent the last two years desperately doing all we could do avoid it, obsessively following health orders to the letter, being super cautious about being in crowds, amassing a huge collection of masks (and wearing them any time we left the house), and being a pin-up family for vaccinations, getting our jabs the minute we could, and boosted to boot. 

Despite that, COVID announced itself on Sunday morning after a round of RATs. In the olden days, we would go out to brunch. In the present days, we do a saliva test to see if we have the plague.

Two of the three inhabitants of the house were positive. The one with diabetes (me!) was not. And I remain that way (salt over shoulder) forty-eight hours later, (touch wood). 

The positive tests became hour zero and from then on, we were in full isolation mode. Aaron was confined to our bedroom, the kidlet to her own. If either of them need to leave their room for any reason, they send out an alert, and mask up, and wipe down any surface they’ve as much as looked at sideways, and empty half a can of Glen20 in their wake. 

I prep and deliver all food and drinks to rooms and am at the beck and call of the infirm. We Facetime each other throughout the day to chat and check in on symptoms. I bossily remind them to keep up fluids and eat the segmented oranges I’ve delivered to them. I am annoying myself, so can’t even being to imagine how much I’m annoying them. We haven’t been in the same room as each other at all, and only see each other in the flesh when we are eating meals in the garden – sitting away from each other, necessitating speaking in very loud voices, giving our poor neighbours unwanted insight into our conversations. 

It’s slightly absurd. Until those two lines appeared on those two tests on Sunday morning, we had been carrying on as normal and not giving a thought to needing to isolate from each other. I’d just gotten out of bed, a bed I’d been in for eight hours with my COVID positive husband lying right there. I’m pretty sure the night before I’d handed him my fork so he could have a taste of something I was eating. While we were super cautious about being around others, we didn’t for a second think that we needed to worry about our little unit. Home was meant to be a sanctuary. Now I’m trying to elude the little virus that could from inside our own home. It’s the shittiest game of dodgeball I’ve ever played. 

My anxiety has remained mostly in check. I’ve gone into fight mode as I desperately try to disinfectant spray any hint of the virus. I only care that my family is okay and not feeling too poorly or taking a turn for the worse in any way. I’m worried that they won’t recover easily and quickly. I can’t stop thinking about long COVID.

And then there are the flashes of terror (like the middle of the night when I’m lying awake) and I wonder how my body WILL behave when (if?) it gets COVID and then, for a few moments in the cover of darkness, I find myself becoming a statistic, explained away by my underlying condition. They’re the words that ring in my ears thanks to every single presser from the NSW government. It’s so bleak and terrifying in those moments, and all I can do is remind myself that even though there are no guarantees, I am doing all I can. 

I’m obsessively checking my CGM because if ever there was an early warning alarm system, it’s my glucose levels. It’s a reliable tell to let me know that an infection is brewing. Straight, steady, in-range numbers greet me in the mornings, insulin doses not needing to be superpowered by Loop to keep me that way. 

All the while, I’m trying to understand how it is possible that I remain COVID free (cornuto sign). Because that makes no sense at all. Other than to believe I am some sort of extraordinary, turbocharged powerhouse of immunity (I mean, the vaccines and boosters probably have something to do with it too…)

Friends and family keep checking in and I boast about how, for once, my broken body is being legendary. ‘Are we…superhuman,’ asks my friend Georgie who has also managed to remain COVID-free despite being exposed left, right and centre, even though her immune system and mine match in their hopelessness. (Georgie, I just waved my evil eye charm around for you.)

I have developed this ridiculous superiority complex that is bound to be my downfall. Is it possible that my stupid, fucked up, overactive immune system that hasn’t shown any reason for me to believe it knows what it’s doing and keeps killing off things it shouldn’t has decided to be overactive in the right way, destroying COVID as it’s tried to move in? Do I have an invisible protective shield around me that has transformed me into some sort of crusader, fighting the evil coronavirus and winning? (There is a small salt mountain now behind me. Also, I’m an idiot.)

But then I remember that pride comes before a fall, and that this body of mine and this immune system of mine are not the sharpest tools in the shed at the best of times. And that thinking, let alone writing for anyone to see, that perhaps I might escape this round of COVID is only going to come back to bite me. And I think that I really should listen to Toby Zeigler, because truly, the last thing I want to do is to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing. Probably best I don’t hit publish in that case…

The West Wing