Part II: On Surviving the Viral Hermeneutics of COVID-19

Abstract

This description is a follow up to the piece, “When COVID-19 Meets Pandemic Hope: Existential Care of, and in, the Impossible,” and offers my own personal lived experience of my partner and I surviving COVID-19. I also offer commentary on the danger of hermeneutical violence and the healing power of hermeneutical reframe.

Having just received my positive test results for COVID-19, after 12 painful days of awaiting results for my partner and myself, I wanted to share both my own personal experience of this virus and why I think an understanding of hermeneutics (how we interpret) is an “essential service.”

I had a strange but healing experience yesterday listening to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s (Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases) take on the state of affairs with COVID-19. One gnawing and terrifying question for me all the way through this experience is how someone who is aging can respond relatively well with this death angel passing by here at Passover, and someone who seems young and quite healthy can end up on a respirator in critical condition, without warning.

I vividly remember the night when I was not sure whether to go to bed and risk not breathing again or go to the ER. We were instructed to go the hospital if we could not breathe, but I could breathe . . . at least barely. I literally stood in the hallway with my partner, both of us traumatically unsure of what to do. My dry cough had gotten bad enough that it felt as though I was breathing hot cotton; terrified that my airway was closing, she held my hand and kept reciting “you are breathing, keep breathing.” Our French bulldog, the bravest companion throughout this experience, kept his body close to mine. “Keep breathing,” I told myself. I have apnea so I sleep with a CPAP machine; I think it very well could have kept me alive.

What has not been widely mentioned is that this virus attacks the kidneys, hammering at them to the point that both of us feared we were passing bilateral kidney stones. My partner experienced that symptom the hardest and watching her writhe in pain was horrible. On that evening, I sat beside her as she cried in the fetal position, begging out loud for me to decide whether we should go to the ER. We did not know if this was COVID-19 related or not; reports were contradictory, but articles citing organ failure drove our fears. However, that pain and fear also passed.

Other symptoms included chills that turned into unrelenting full body cramps; sharp, shooting pain in what felt like random areas of the body (finger tips, calves, the lower back, bladder, heels); blasts of heat waves moving through our bodies that were hard to register on a thermometer; complete loss of taste and smell; incessant dry cough; burning eyes, nose and ears; exhaustion and fatigue that nevertheless was coupled with an alert awareness that my body was at war such that it induced insomnia; periods of vertigo; nausea and lower intestinal GI trouble; and finally, minutes experienced as years, with weeks experiences as seconds. I thank my parents who reminded me of the backwoods remedies of mustard and/or pickle juice to relieve cramps—these were the unexpected saviors over the past 2 weeks. Sleep, staying hydrated, and the simple task of showering were at best existentially unattainable, and during the worst days of this illness, felt harmful.

To my best count, today is day 16 of having COVID-19. I now have an annoying cough, fatigue, and upper congestion. However, what is more troubling is the pandemic exhaustion and existential disorientation—concerns, worries, and wonders about what a postpandemic world will look like for us all. I mentioned some existential concerns that come along with this experience in an earlier writing, but we have to keep in mind the emotional fallout of this experience that accompanies the physical symptoms.

Deep sadness and mourning; helplessness which increases in direct ratio to our arrogance; ambivalence about the privilege of being able to be tested, having access to PTO, and the ability to work from home when so many others do not; persistent worry regarding the unpredictability and randomness of this virus; uncertainty about how to care well for others while we are inseparable and trying to navigate this pandemic ourselves; rage about the unnecessary suffering and death; as well as hopefulness and grace that this virus is presenting to us. I urge us to not forget the virus’ own existential and emotional project.

This is a lonely, desperate virus. It highjacks other cells to create itself, over and over again. It lives where we are in-spired, and tries to rid us of our individual and collective abilities to jettison it. It cannot live without us—and it does not want us to live without it. It lets us breathe but only enough to aggravate a cough so that we cannot breathe; it exhausts us but will not let us sleep; it pounds away at our kidneys so that we cannot flush its toxins and get stronger; it heats us, then chills us, then locks us down with cramps, keeping us off guard and bewildered. The more surreal and uncertain our relationship is with the virus, the more the virus becomes an expert on leaving clandestine traces of “air” strikes, only recognized by us after the fact in our growing absences. The virus is not evil. Its anguish is that it knows it is unloved and that we will not connect with it willingly, so it has to trick and force its way into communion. It stays connected, though, through the power of its symptomatic impact.

The hardest part, though, is not knowing and yet hearing report after report declaring what “is” the case. What was relieving about Dr. Fauci’s comments is when he mentioned that despite studying infectious diseases for 50 years, he still does not understand the randomness of why someone healthy dives into critical distress while others do not. It was simultaneously extraordinarily relieving to hear this, and yet a sad revelation as it was a confirmation of unknowing. An expert knowingly naming the unknowing was very therapeutic. Likewise, when someone said, “we don’t know what happened to your test results, but we are tracking them down,” made us feel better—yet, again, this was an acknowledgement of unknowing. Knowing that we do not know is ok. This recognition can be more healing than when we pretend to know things that we do not, even with the best of intentions.

However, when we leave out important details about what we DO know, especially when reporting that someone who was healthy is now on a respirator, or discounting others’ lived experiences that do not fit the current (hourly) protocol of which symptoms “count,” this is hermeneutical violence. None of us need the added stress induced by this kind of violence, even if inflicted unwittingly to, ironically, calm anxiety and uncertainty.

There is a kind of sinister delight that seeks to draw others into a shared, morose panic with hyperbolic speech and abstraction, leaving others wondering what else there may be to the story. We hedge with stories so as to not upset someone, or to not be judged, or to seek empathy, or add to stories to manipulate others and position us in the know. We have to be aware that communication is more virulent and much more contagious than the novel corona virus. The corona virus attacks our respiratory system in various ways, while hermeneutical violence attacks our souls. For instance, according to reports flying about, are we going to see another 480, 000 deaths between now and next summer? If you are 25 years and have a cough are you doomed? Are all men in their late 50s with high blood pressure and COVID symptoms going to end up on ventilators? If so, see ya! Or, how could I have survived this disease and write these words if that were the case? Do not particulars matter and influence these “facts?”

We have gotten so confident in what we can count and see that we miss the politics IN the counting and seeing, which then prevent us from taking in what isn’t counted or seen—there is no raw empiricism. And, no, merely saying we should trust what is empirical does not nullify the requirement that data has to be interpreted and narratives told about such data that are embedded with allegiances to values. I talked with a man on a street corner here in Chicago who was snapping his fingers. I asked him if he was keeping pace with a toon, but he said he was keeping all the elephants out of downtown Chicago. I said there were no elephants in downtown Chicago, and he said, “It works, doesn’t it?” This is empirical: Number of elephants in downtown Chicago: Zero, and directly correlated with finger snapping of one man at a particularly Chicago street corner. Nietzsche: “There are no facts, only interpretations,” and this can work for or against us! But there are interpreted and interpreting con-texts.

We have agreed that only essential services should stay open. Well, soul care is an essential service and hermeneutics is at the heart of what can either kill us or save us. Reframing is life changing and I have seen it save lives, literally. We need it now. When we did not get our results for 12 days after being tested, it was agonizing not knowing. We could not contextualize the symptoms, could not orient ourselves as to what was happening in the here and now. However, when we finally received the phone call with the results, my partner made the astute observation that were we to have gotten the results when we were so ill, it likely would have panicked us.

Same results, same time frame, different meanings.

Postpandemic world: The end of our shared existence as we know it? Or the end of our shared existence as we know it! The destruction of the 1%? Or the destruction of the 1%! More awareness of who we have taken for granted? Or more awareness of who we have taken for granted! Needing a different definition of business? Or needing a different definition of business! Any and every experience can turn against us or for us. One thing I do know; this “leveler of hubris” has brought us all to our knees. I hope we take this horrible (or gracious?) gift, this blessed rage of dys-order, as good stewards when learning to care better for each other.

When the viral count settles as the summer heat builds, will we forget again? It’s up to us. Off to donate plasma, biologically and existentially. Time for us to rebuild.