Leah

I am in the ENT waiting room for what feels like my 100th visit. My sinuses did not used to look like this. Covid did that and came through like a bad tenant. It punched holes in the walls and ran its truck through the garage door on the way out. And then it came back again and again. Because apparently that is just what we do now. We get force infected on repeat and call it a cold. And here I am in the medical complex, the very place that is supposed to fix what Covid broke, and everyone around me is orchestrating a symphony of coughs, sniffles, and sneezes. The woman across from me is coughing into the open. A kid checking in is sneezing like there is no tomorrow. No masks. Not a single one to be found. It is like being stuck inside a burning building where everyone is calmly roasting marshmallows. They send me to get my allergy panel, which is a cruel little irony, because at this point I am allergic to the air. The phlebotomist has the sniffles. A full on, wet sniffle while she ties off my arm to take my blood to see what I am allergic to. I wanted to say, "I think I am allergic to THIS." So the doctor comes in, looks at my scan, and says, "Wow." My sinuses really do look like an ant farm. Little tunnels and craters where it should be smooth. She says, "Let us try the steroid rinse for 3 months." I nod like a good patient. What else am I going to do? It is the final chapter before they schedule the surgery. Shake, pour, tilt, burn, and pray. Those are the instructions. And here is what I keep thinking about while the rinse stings. Covid is slowly weeding us out. Sinus by sinus, lung by lung, and brain by brain. Slowly and insidiously, it takes us. And what we learned from all this is that we are just supposed to just keep casually walking around coughing, sneezing and sniffling on each other, pretending we do not see it. No one connects the dots because no one wants to look at the shit show. Everyone just allows the Covid timeline to proceed with this slow, unacknowledged erosion, and call that normal.