To me, anyway.  I often think I have come to terms with dying.  If I have a heart attack, or something else probably fatal, I’m okay with not calling the ambulance and having someone attempt to save me.  I seriously think I’d rather just go than have to deal with all the horrors of healthcare, and there are some serious horrors there.

So I’m thinking, my friend suggested maybe it’s safe enough to go for a ride in the car with her, if we’re careful.  Are you crazy?  I think to myself.  Today, it is yet another gloriously beautiful summer day, so I’m thinking what the hey, why not?  Whoa, Jean.  Are YOU crazy?  Fear of contagion is real.

You know why?  I was sick in December, I may have mentioned this ten zillion times.  I was almost totally incapacitated, could barely breathe for  weeks.  I tried everything. Allergy pills, my asthma inhaler, which I rarely need, Mucinex that my homemaker bought for me, steam, everything I could think of.  I extremely slowly started to get better, and when I was well enough at the end of December, saw my doctor, who had me x-rayed for pneumonia.  Nope. Also gave me a very strong antibiotic in case it was pneumonia.  Then I started to get better.  It was a full three months later, around the end of March or sometime in April, that I finally felt like I had regained most of the strength I had lost.  I was extremely weak for a couple of months, and only gradually regained that strength. So I am really not willing to risk going through that again.  It was a really awful experience, and I am not one who had to be put on a respirator and had horrific after effects.  Not saying I had the virus, but whatever it was, I think I was lucky I came out of it intact.  Relatively speaking.

So maybe not as okay with dying as I thought.  It’s probably a good thing.