What is There Left To Give?
29 March 2024
This post was originally made on Cohost.
CW: vent art, gruesome, nonsexual nudity.

I have been more ill this year than last, and it is not even April yet. In the wake of a deep breakdown, I have decided to write about the awful experience of continual illness, during which I also lost my job. It is not going to be a fun read, but it is an earnest one. I hope you take the time to do so, but I do not judge anyone who refrains.
What is There Left To Give?
It is March 29th, on Good Friday, on a weekend where those of the Christian faith honor the sacrifice their idol made to atone for the sins of humanity. Depending on how much you trust at-home COVID tests, contact tracing, and the general state of medical knowledge, this might be my third time having COVID in three months.
In 2023 I was diagnosed with a breast lump which thankfully turned out not to be cancerous. They finally extracted it in late December, less than a week after I came home from a tumultuous Christmas which left me shattered emotionally. I returned to work from the holidays, fresh off my surgical recovery, and spent a day working before I was struck with something that knocked me flat. I only had one COVID test at the time, but it returned negative. It sure felt like COVID, though. In fact it felt like the next time I would have a confirmed case of COVID.
Two weeks later and I find myself recovered aside from a persistent cough that attacks me in waves so fierce I have to hold myself back from vomiting. Five or six times per day I am holding back my bile. It is at this point that I first start feeling like something might be cosmically wrong with me. Not physically, but something in the metaphysics where gods and dæmons toil with mortal lives.
And then I discovered that I was CO2 poisoned. You can read about that saga here. Suffice to say, I may have spent three entire years being poisoned by a lack of circulation which meant I was not getting enough oxygen. There were two glorious weeks, in which I rejoiced and joked and japed about my newfound oxygen. My hypomania got a little out of hand, but not unmanageably so. And I was going to see my girlfriend soon! I last saw her six months ago, this was exciting!
And then I got fired.
I'm not going to go into the details of internally what happened, because we all know the gist of it. Software companies are profiting massively from a hiring freeze and employee purge in Q1, and so there weren't enough contracts to go around. I expected it. I saw it coming.
It still stung. It took a couple weeks to realize how much it stung. By the time it started stinging I was already in Juniper's arms. It was easy enough to overlook the pain of yet another career dilemma thrown in the path of an autistic adult. And I spent a lovely weekend in Seattle which was only mildly marred by completely gouging my knee out on a rainy crosswalk bumper. I do mean completely. We had to patch the bleeding with a hastily made tissue pad and apply pressure by tying it with my scarf to stop the bleeding. We hobbled me back to her GF's place and spent the afternoon doing first aid and getting a lot of blood everywhere.
By the end of the trip I was able to walk again, and I flew home on a flight with a 6 hour layover which turned into a cancellation, a complimentary stay in a Holiday Inn, 2 hours of sleep, and a packed flight home. But soon I was back in Toronto, and after a day of rest I was on my way to Chicago, to see my fiancee.
I woke up that morning feeling bizarre, exhausted, and vaguely unwell. But it was too late to cancel and I had no way of knowing what was up. I figured if I took the flight, as I always do decked out in full respirator gear and the only person ever following COVID safety precautions, that at least I would minimize risk to everyone else. After all I felt bad but not as bad as the previous time I got COVID in 2022.
When I arrived in Chicago I could barely stand, felt delirious, and had an ear infection. When we got back to Rezzy's place, I did a Covid test. It was positive. What followed was an exact repeat of the symptoms from early January, plus all the symptoms of an ear infection. If my sleeping schedule was already in error due to jetlag from Seattle, then the sleepless nights fighting between coughing, sore throats, and an ear infection were not helping. And I could not taste anything other than salt and sweet, so everything tasted like garbage, and I was struggling with my eating disorder rearing its head.
So by the time late February rolled around, those three blissful weeks of post-CO2-poison had turned around into the most awful week of illness since my appendicitis in college. Meanwhile my knee was still an oozing scab of pain, though at least it was managed by proper dressings by now. I was still coughing that horrible hacking cough which made me want to puke four-to-five times per day. I now felt my ears crackle and pop every time I swallowed (every time). My sense of balance was off, I felt nauseous, and my ear hurt. I could barely taste anything and could barely force myself to stay fed.
I went home the day I was done isolating. Again not a single person on the flight wore a mask, or practiced safety precautions. I was again the only masked traveler. As no airline practices COVID-related refunds any longer, it was that or be out a few hundred dollars. A harrowing proposition when I was three weeks out from losing my job. But I made it home, and rested.
And my ears were still infected
I cannot describe how visually uncomfortable it is to feel your ears crackle and pop every time you swallow. Do you know how many times the human body swallows per day? You probably never think of it because it doesn't come up a lot outside of eating and drinking. To me it's the most overwhelming sensation imaginable. You can feel the air slipping through your tubes if you pay too much attention. Your drums vibrating with pressure from both sides. A crunching somewhere between fresh snow and broken glass.
And the cough was continuing too. After a couple weeks it abated. But the crackling, the terror of my ears, continued. Continues. I'm writing this after over a month of continuous sensory overwhelming. It's gotten better during the day. It's mostly at night that it keeps me up and halters my sleep.
The start of my March was treating this ear infection. Now free of COVID, I went on antibiotics, and my ear pain vanished and and my balance returned and I stopped feeling nauseous. It had only been two weeks of this. Two weeks of nausea and pain and sensory hell before finally I felt a little relief.
But the sensory hell didn't lift. And so now I sit waiting every day hoping that a specialist referral will pay off. Maybe someone can figure out fixing that part of me. They already exorcised a knot from my boob, maybe they can exorcise whatever hell is playing tantrum in my ear.
And as I wait for that call, it happens again.
My roommate, bless its soul, is one of the most stabilizing forces in my life. After years of chaotic living situations with my ex and friends who turned out to be incompatible roommates, Blackle has been the exact chaotic platonic force I need in my life. But inevitably we share space, and we tend to get each other sick. And when we both started getting a sore throat and extreme fatigue, we felt pretty certain we knew what was up. Its girlfriend tested positive for COVID. And then tested negative. And we had run out of COVID tests at this point. But it sure does feel like the last two illnesses I had. Perhaps I'm not coughing this time because I finally brought oxygen into my room. It did some statistical analysis. It estimates about 50% odds that we have COVID.
I sit thinking about how high the false negative for tests is. I think about, even theoretically, having COVID three times in three months. I think about how I'm the only person on any flight recently who even bothered wearing a mask. I think about how I can barely make it outside once per week because I've been sick all year. I think about how much I miss my girlfriends, one of whom I've not seen since Thanksgiving, and how dogshit I would feel if I got any of them sick. I think about how The Pandemic Is Over. I think about the tracks of an angry god. I think about how there must be a cosmic force which has damned me.
I think about how I am the devil. That's fair, I think.
And I completely, utterly, emotionally, break down.
If you're looking for a moral to this story, or resolution to these feelings, you won't find an easy one. I'm so sorry to deliver this news, but I feel like I am living in my own wake. I am sick, and I have been more sick than well for the entirety of this year. I have been more unwell in 2024 than in the totality of 2023.
Capitalism, the elusive "job market", wants my wellness, my life, my sacrifice of blood. And I lie in bed, unemployed and unwell, and wonder: What is there left to give?