Postcard #188: "Typhoid Tommy"

FRONT TEXT: 

When sickness knocks a person out

Then every thing looks blue,

The brightest colors 'neath the sun

All take a darker hue.

But don't you care, the sun still shines,

And with its strengthening rays

You'll soon be back to health, we trust,

And to more joyous days.

Reverse:

HELEN A. CASTERLINE, Publisher

EDEN, N. Y.

Pandemic 2.0. I was redeployed from being an operating room nurse to help staff related Covid 19 items...infections, hotline, training and of Covid vaccines. So on Saturday [this would be Dec 12th?] I started to feel... off. By

that night I was making an appointment for a clinic visit. I had nightmare of being some asymptomatic Typhoid Mary, infecting the entire Employee health department just before vaccine rollout.  I was wearing

mask at home, sleeping and using a bathroom separate from my wife and child.  By Sunday night I had a 103.2 F fever. Coughing Fits. Thick globs of coughed agony brought headaches. Headaches/ fever that felt as though my eyeballs were being cooked in their sockets.  Loss of appetite with insomnia.

And 2 rapid swabs and I PCR test later apparently it was not Covid.  I am not among the chosen few to receive the vaccine. They hope to have all those who handle patients, vaccinated by February. We will see...

www.Minormumbles.com

US-7244881

I sent this card to ojninni who is a wonderful human being who says she will be happy with whatever card I sent and whatever I write.  Blessed are the few!  I sent her this card...which after writing it realized with all the demands that people make no one is going to want an antique card with a poem on the front that essentially amounts to a get well card.  This card was picked up in a recent ebay lot.  I kept the word "Sample" written there in what looks like old black fountain pen.  I kinda liked it.  Especially since it mentions feeling like all you could see was blue.  One time (and I think I wrote a postcard about this) I got so sick with such a high fever that I felt I could only see in blue.  Everything was in blue hues.  I thought I broke myself with how sick I had become.   

So in after game analysis I think I had a combination Tonsilitis and viral bronchitis maybe even bordering on pneumonia.  My tonsils and throat were swollen and sore.  It would explain the fever and difficulty breathing.  I am still coughing occasionally.  Weeks later.  It scared the shit out of me.  I think the fear of it being Covid it worse (stress, cortisol, immune function blunting) This is merely fear based in that I could hurt someone else if I had it and think its a morally justified fear as a parent, nurse, and empathetic human being.  This pandemic has broken me.  

I mailed this card and the next few cards out with my family holiday card.  Which is essentially a Happy new Year card.  So what if its a little late?  I will end up putting a one cent stamp on them even though they are all going to be mailed in an envelope.  I still destroyed them by writing stories directly on them and they are still going to travel.  But there is a reluctance on my end of mailing a card INSIDE an envelope.  Like I am not being true to the reality of my mission or my blog since it will not actually get postmarked.  MY GOD TOM.  FUCKING STOP.  JUST MAIL THE FUCKING CARD ALREADY.