For more official guidance, check the CDC's guide on what to do if you are sick or the Mayo Clinic's home care tips .
If you are reading this in real-time, at the witching hour, with a box of tissues on one side and a cold cup of tea on the other: take one more sip of water. Reset your timer for your next dose of medicine. And know that somewhere out there, across the strange, silent network of the sick and sleepless, someone just hit “publish” on a rambling article for you.
When you are sick at 4 AM, completely isolated, the loneliness is physical. You might have a partner sleeping next to you. You might have a roommate three feet away. You might even have a cat who judges you from the foot of the bed. i wrote this at 4am sick with covid
Even if you live with family, the 4 AM, quarantined, masked-up reality is incredibly isolating. It’s a temporary, lonely existence.
Sick writing strips away the performative layer of language. You stop trying to be good and start trying to be alive . You write because you need to prove to yourself that you still have a pulse, that your consciousness hasn't been completely subsumed by the white noise of the heater and the rasp of your own breath. For more official guidance, check the CDC's guide
But for now? I'm going to hit "publish" and pass out face-first into my blue-stained pillowcase.
For one night, make ice chips your whole identity. They numb the throat, they hydrate, and the crunching noise gives your brain something to focus on besides the feeling that your lungs are lined with sand. And know that somewhere out there, across the
Suddenly, you have energy. It is the wrong kind of energy. It is fever-fueled mania. You decide you must write an article. You must document this. For posterity. For science. For the 47 other people who are also awake at 4 AM scrolling Reddit while coughing up a lung.
I’m writing this from that exact pocket of time. I am currently Day 4 into a COVID-19 infection, and the world has narrowed down to the diameter of my humidified bedroom. The Liminal Space of the Sickbed
Despite the fear and discomfort, there is also a strange, quiet comfort to be found. It is the understanding that you are part of a global, shared experience. Millions of people, over the past few years, have sat exactly where I am sitting, feeling exactly what I am feeling.