HALLIE EPHRON: Like everyone else, I’m constantly worrying about catching COVID. I cough once too often or my throat feels scratchy… My sense of smell seems temporarily off… I look at those charts (27% positive test rate) and the news articles about how spectacularly infectious Omicron is… And it seems impossible to imagine that I haven't gotten it yet.
And of course who knows because in our area test kits are rarer than hen’s teeth and standing online for a test surrounded by possibly Covid-positive people doesn’t seem all that prudent.
Left to my own devices, I imagine little red and white soccer balls multiplying like tribbles (see Star Trek) in my lungs and blood vessels.
The other day I felt a little lightheaded and got so worried (paranoid?) that I hauled out my pulse oximeter. Clamped it on my finger. Waited as the red lights blinked and flashed until the O2 reading came up: 74. AKA nearly dead. And yet clearly not.
Then
I read (thank you Google) the caveats about pulse oximeters and
discovered cold fingers can give false readings. It's winter her in New
England. One day it’s thirty-five degrees and the next it barely breaks
ten. Of course my fingers get cold.
I soaked my finger in hot water, took another reading, and my oxygen
level measured in the mid 90s. Like Lazarus I’d risen from the dead.
My hands are cold because my house is cold. I’m cheap and environmentally conscious, so I try to only warm the rooms I’m hanging out in. 67 in the part of the house I’m in; 62 in the parts I’m not.
My plants seem to like it. An orchid in a chilly room has been blooming since August and a begonia I never knew could bloom is blooming away.
But my hands do get cold. Much as I’d like to go around in fleece mittens, it’s not practical for typing or writing or cooking or doing just about anything that requires the slightest bit of manual dexterity. So for most of the winter (and right now) I wear fingerless gloves. I also keep wraps handy—on the back of my office chair hangs a soft green shawl for throwing over my shoulders or wrapping around my neck.
Hot tea with honey is just the thing in the middle of the afternoon. And when I get desperate, out come a pair of microwaveable slippers, their soles filled with barley and lavender. I’ve been shuffling about in them for so many years that I’ve had to patch the bottoms with duct tape.
Every once in a while I open the front door to remind myself how much warmer it is inside than out.
How are you dealing with winter? And those of you in Florida and California and Texas and Arizona (you know who you are), stop gloating.
