The Upside of Feeling Horrible

Because there’s always an upside

I haven’t had one cold this year. We all know why. We’re staying home most of the time and when we go out, we — most of us anyway — wear our masks. When we get home we promptly wash our hands. All the things our kindergarten teachers told us to do. And look! They were right. Who knew?

The first winter after my partner, AleXander, moved back to New York City from his twenty years in Vermont he had five colds. One right after the other. This year? Not one.

I’m ready to keep the mask at the ready next winter, pandemic or not.

But there’s a secret little backdoor part of me that misses the comfort of being sick with something familiar and non-lethal. Because here’s the thing: having a cold is kind of like being forced to have a small vacation. A time out. A chance to sleep all day without an iota of guilt.

What’s the next best thing?

Gum surgery!

Since our current level of poverty made me eligible to get Medicaid for a year, it’s time to make the NYU School of Dentistry my second home. For decades as I’d get yet another root canal, I’ve had dentists tsk-tsking me about not getting crowns. In what universe is it possible to just pony up $3000 and up per crown? Not in the one that I’ve inhabited all my life. So I’ve got at least three crownless root canals that are slated to be crowned.

Fun fact: Medicaid only covers crowns on front teeth. The back ones, the ones where you really need that extra support? Tough patooties, Angelface. But it’s a dental school which means crowns cost about a third what regular dentists charge. Well, yes, and they take three times as long to get done but that’s how it goes in The Greatest Country in The World.

Oh, and one of the crowns is close enough to the front for the beancounters at Medicaid to agree to cover it. Gosh, guys! Thanks!

However, the other two are not only in the back but years of gingivitis and bone loss meant that before the crowns can happen I had to have gum surgery. I’ll spare you the gory details. Fortunately, the student surgeon doing the deed was good with a needle and with four serious shots of anesthesia, I felt squat. It was tedious and unpleasant but it didn’t hurt.

Until later.

I was actually still a little numb the next day. That was the day I slept the entire day away. Not the ideal vacation but you take what you can get in a pandemic, amiright?

Other than sleeping all day, where’s this upside of which I speak?

Yesterday I woke up with some residual pain but feeling like a million bucks. It was so great to not be dragged down by grooved-in pain and after all those hours of sleep, I felt like I could take on the world. I felt high. It was great! I did laundry and wrote and read and took a long shower. Ok, yes, I overdid it a bit and didn’t leave the building for a second day, but man, did I feel good.

And that reminded me of the other great thing about being sick: not being sick.

It’s true of big sickness and small. That first day of being on the rebound after a cold? It’s brilliant. You feel like a new person. You’ll overdo it, of course, we all do and then we go back to bed.

And the bigger the sickness the better that post-sick high. Back in ’03, I got whomped but good with an autoimmune disorder that put me in the hospital for two memorable weeks. I was sick for months after and then had another dizzy little dip each time they lowered the dose of Prednisone. But by the time I was in decent enough shape for Neil, my BFF, to treat me to a trip to London for a week, I was flyin’!

I realize that this is akin to the old cartoon philosophy of hitting oneself in the head with a hammer because it feels so good when one stops.

But we never have to hammer our own heads. Life is always nearby with her own very special hammer. It’s not only physical sickness that offers this weird opportunity to feel exceptionally good when it ceases. The examples of post-hammering exhilaration are numerous. Being unemployed and then finding work (hey, it happens)? Joyous. Losing a relationship and then realizing how awesome it is to be single for a while? Incomparable. Being forced out of a shared apartment and then finding a great place of your own? The heavens open with song!

And here comes The Mother of All Post-Hammering highs: we could actually — in the next year or so — be experiencing life without all the restrictions of our current pandemic reality.

I know. I had to sit down, too.

It’s kind of too much to take in. You mean that there’s a day in the not too insanely distant future when we can eat in restaurants, hug friends, travel internationally, go to the gym, watch movies, spend an afternoon at the Russian Turkish baths, go to the theater, have sex with someone besides our ever-so patient partner, and ride the Cyclone at Coney Island again?

All those things we just took for granted before 2020 while we were complaining about everything else?

Yes.

Being the ungrateful wretches that we are, the shine will come off the goodie bowl pretty quickly. But given the enormity of what we’ve shared this past year, let’s see if we can hold onto that sense of joy and excitement over the supposedly simple things in life a little longer. When the brakes need replacing or the roof starts to leak, again, or when the bus is late, let’s remember what it was like when literally thousands of people were dying every hour of every day and many of us had to deal with nincompoops with masks under their chins (or worse), shall we?

Ok, time for another ibuprofen and back to bed. I’ll feel even better tomorrow!

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