I know that you are feeling better when you are beginning to annoy me again.
The moment you first noticed fever, you disappeared behind a closed door and designed a strict plan involving zero contact with our family. After 18 days of quarantine in our bedroom, where a mere five-minute FaceTime call weakens your entire body, we see the slow return of your strength. With that progress comes a familiar return to mild marital bickering, a blessing that washes over me like healing waves of relief.
You carry the weighty knowledge that my past chemotherapy and incurable cancer leaves me with a devastated immune system. For the past decade, my life with Waldenstrom macroglobulinemia — a rare lymphoma — had already necessitated the embrace of social distancing as infections became more frequent and being exposed to the sniffles sent me to the hospital with pneumonia.
Every virus holds the potential to wreak havoc in my body. Lost is the ability to self-regulate or manage fevers judiciously. My cells’ misguided reaction to illness is fiercely protective yet dangerous. The threat Covid-19 poses allows no room for error.
You have taken the best care of me by isolating yourself drastically. Your act of contagion chivalry makes me miss you even more. You are my hero.
Your doctor could not believe the relentless persistence of your fever. Waiting for test results, she wondered aloud about other causes. I do not like the rabbit hole she disappears down when inquiring about night sweats and enlarged lymph nodes. When the coronavirus test comes back positive, she is surprised. I am not.
I like to believe that I know you, my love of 30 years, fairly well. But in these weeks of separation, I discover new, unexamined pieces to our knowingness.
From behind the safety of the guest room wall, I listen closely to learn how footsteps to the bathroom at 2 a.m. reveal your strength …. how the clearing of your throat tells the depths of today’s cough …. how fluctuations in appetite connect to frequency of fevers …. how the slightest waver of your voice divulges overall malaise …. how levels of exhaustion are confessed in the quality of tired sighs …. how longing and loneliness can be measured in the precise selection of late night music on YouTube.
We have our first squabble, by phone, on day 16. That is a very good sign indeed. It is trash pickup day. You call with helpful suggestions about how precisely to put out the trash the right way. Under the usual division of labor in our home, trash management lies exclusively in your domain. Weeks have passed with you being too sick to bother. Today you want it done right. I’m insulted by your detailed instructions. It’s going to be hard to renegotiate control of space, domain and trash cans after illness subsides.
Normally, you take pride in creating healthy, tasty meals. Now you are relegated to texting food requests, negotiating the exact timing of your meal deliveries with other household happenings. With our 22-year-old twin boys back home and taking college classes remotely, we all must be well-versed in the safety protocol of leaving your meals — on disposable products — outside your door at a predetermined hour. You mask and glove up, open the door with a Lysol wipe, take the food and shut the door quickly behind you while we all hide. I enlist all my self-restraint to not run out and give you a hug, collapsing into your comforting chest, lingering there a moment, breathing in your soothing ways. That breach of caution would take my breath away. Literally.
I confess: Sometimes I crack open my door a smidgen to see your back for one fleeting second as you collect the covered tray and retreat into your lair. I cover my mouth, hold my breath, watch with wide eyes and silently take you all in. I miss you. But I am afraid of you. You’re typically the picture of health — if this virus gives you a run for the money, what would it do to me?
We are in hour 68 of the 72 hour fever-free window you must pass before being released from quarantine. Your telemedicine appointment outlines detailed guidelines for coming out of isolation safely. We must avoid accidental exposure to lingering infection by the thorough washing of bedsheets, careful cleaning of surfaces, mindful removal of anything used, flinging open of windows and airing out of fear. I must remember to ask the doctor: What is the half-life of fear?
By phone I tell you that I cannot wait to sit with you on the couch, gaze into your beautiful dark eyes, and talk about our feelings forever. You jokingly ask if that is your punishment. I don’t just laugh, I sigh in release. Your sense of humor is back, the graciousness of that delicious gift. I exhale deeper.
Post-quarantine, will I hold you tighter, appreciate you deeper, focus on you better?
Or when trash day rolls around next week, will we struggle with the minutia and get trapped by tempting old arguments?
Will this virus engrave in our hearts the preciousness, and how fleetingly it can all disappear?
Or will we find ourselves mindlessly debating the best way to load the dishwasher or the ideal number on the thermostat?
Let us commit to an even deeper way to connect after this necessary distancing, after this imposed time apart.
May I forever look at you with the same longing as when you step out of isolation today …. the same man that I fell deeply in love with 32 years ago during graduate school, walking the banks of the Charles River, playing guitar at 2 a.m., dancing in your underwear and making me laugh like no one else.
Welcome back to my world, sweetest love.
Lisa J. Wise is vice chair of member services for the International Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia Foundation.