#life post covid

[lesliemeyers]

baby seasons change but people don't

for day 1 of @spstyleweek: nostalgia + extras ⤵

here are the not layered/angled versions of these!

[selfindulgentcompetition]

TRYING AGAIN WITH CLEARER WORDING. PLS READ BEFORE VOTING

*Meaning: When did you stop wearing a mask to a majority of your public activities? Wearing a mask when you feel sick or very rarely for specific events/reasons counts as “stopping”

[More Questions Here]

[aliteral-ghost]

GRIAN!!! PUT FALSE AND REN IN THE LIFE SERIES TOGETHER AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!!!!

[heartorbit]

just how can i protect your smile?

[lovexmemonster]

that one blackrock scientist thats been plaguing my mind as of late

[whatevahwhatevah]

I was inspired by this absolutely amazing piece :,)) I was listening to “We don’t talk anymore” from Charlie Puth while doodling this, so..I don’t know, do what you want with this information haha-

(Another doodle under the read more)

Wife, mother material. Made to be bred till no end, gorgeous bastard creature-

[once-in-a-half-life]

[felixcloud6288]

Let me tell you about the time I let a turkey interrupt a math exam.

This was summer 2020. Covid lockdowns had just started and we had to use Zoom for classes. I was taking Calculus III that semester. The Professor's policy for exams was we didn't need a lockdown browser, but we needed to be on Zoom with cameras and mics on.

Enter The Problem.

I was raising a baby turkey at the time. I had to have him by my side at all times because he had imprinted on me and he would scream and cry if I wasn't around. Sometimes, he'd scream and cry even if I was around.

I reached out to the professor about that and asked if I could be muted. His response was "No. It will be fine." And so I decided "Okay, whatever happens is your fault now" and I washed my hands of any responsibility.

Day of the exam, I have my camera and mic on. The Problem is perched next to me. As soon as the exam opens, The Problem screams. Now you might think turkeys are all "gobble gobble". I wish that was the case. This is a baby turkey. They scream with the intensity and frequency of a car alarm.

So now everyone is trying to take an exam with what might as well be a car alarm blaring at them. And they know it's me. At one point, I pick up The Problem, put him to the camera and just say "He won't stop." with the most dead expression in my face.

And I didn't care. I did everything I could to stop that, and I was just following the Professor's rules. I was not trapped with them. They were trapped with me. Everyone in that meeting got to experience what my life had been like for the last 3 months. And as far as I care, it was the Professor's fault. And you know what, I would have muted myself if the professor asked, but he never did.

The Problem only stopped when the exam ended. For the next exam, the policy was we had to have the cameras on, but we could mute ourselves.

So yeah, turkeys don't like calculus.

[whoweepsforthesemarios]

How it started: Alison Bechdel is a TERF because she attended michfest and collaborated with Adrienne Rice How it's going: I am forced to cede the point that under these criteria, nearly every prominent feminist active during the 70s and 80s must also be a TERF, but it's either that or admit that maybe this isn't exactly a rock solid rubric so fuck it, Tracy Chapman, Angela Davis and Audre Lorde are all TERFs now too.

[jxpper]

re reading this in ‘23 is like fucking whiplash. this is from jan/feb 2020. it’s June 2023 now.

I wanna reflect a little if you’ll let me. I haven’t had any sort of space to explore the domino effect that came after this. how, because of this day, life changed in more ways than I could ever describe.

we now know that all three of us had COVID. and according to data, there were actually far more cases in the United States than they had thought (most of them in the state I am in)

COVID caught up to me within less than two days of posting this because of my weak immune system. I can only describe it as a rapidly draining battery, as I was the last to get sick but went from fine to exhaustedly ill within hours. I dont remember the two weeks I was sick aside from one instance where I stared at a wall for hours, and another instance where I had to go up to my attic to cool my fever down because the fever gave me hives. but that was many moons ago.

it was after this experience that my healthy grandmother started having a series of miniature strokes. small enough that we didn’t notice until they added up. the best explanation they can give us is that COVID induced blood clots leading to the strokes. She developed vascular dementia from it, and I watched as the long term effects of this virus took away my grandmother from me as she not only forgot, but went mute.

at the request of her doctor, she was moved to a much safer place than my home. It was a last resort that took a lot of time for me to reconcile with. But her doctor explained, over and over, that it was no longer safe for her to live with me. he explained to my mother that the level of care my grandmother needs wasn’t something we could handle. That me sleeping in the day and mom sleeping at night to make sure grandma didn’t wander off was not a sustainable life. because trust me, she wandered. She loves her assisted living home, they treat her like family, and it was the right, albeit painful, choice.

My grandmother losing her memory so close to the death of my grandfather was like losing them both simultaneously. If you know me, you know that losing my grandfather was like losing my world. Losing him was taking the training wheels off of my bike and then crashing off a cliff. But to lose my grandmother’s spirit with him, there is no word beyond devastation to describe it. I am not the same person I was back then. I am hollow now. I kept her dog after she went into assisted living, and the dog had to be put down due to congestive heart failure. the hollow became infinitely bigger. I think the stress of losing the two people who loved her the most broke her heart. I get it, it broke mine too.

My grandmother is mute now, save for a few words that I don’t think she even understands she’s saying. she does recognize me, but not her children. even when she does recognize me, it’s as bittersweet as it is happy. she smiles, she says “yeah!” very excitedly, and to be honest, it’s heartbreaking to see her, a woman of so many words of wisdom, become reduced to short one worded answers.

one very beautiful thing amidst all of this is that she sings. she knows songs from the 40s, 50s, 60s and so on. It’s the only time she talks beyond her singular worded responses. She hums the tune, nods her head, sings the words. I took her out for Mother’s Day to get ice cream and they played old music at the ice cream place. I tried to record a video of her singing, but instead I put the phone down, smiled, and sang along with her.

during COVID, my mom made masks for healthcare workers. She gave them away to whomever needed them in the healthcare field or essential worker field. then, she was asked to sell them at the farmers market. the market asked her to consider baking pies since everyone knows she’s an amazing baker, and the money to support my grandma further was helpful. This spiraled into something we never expected. Masks turned into pies, pies turned into cookies, cookies turned into tarts, cakes, brownies, cupcakes. because of those masks, we now own and run our own bakery that is beloved by our town, and actually, the entire western side of the state.

but the room in our house where she sat and sewed thousands of masks that started that is a room we don’t go into. It’s frozen in time, fabric everywhere, an abandoned sewing machine. my mom can’t walk into that room without a wave of fear washing over her, remembering what those scary days were like. In that room, it is still 2020, the world is still scared, and it’s a shrine I don’t think we’ll be able to tackle for a very long while.

I’ve always wondered what happens after a dystopian movie ends. we never get to see that part in movies. Not really. But it feels like this is what it is. even if that sounds dramatic, it’s true. some days I feel like we all went through this collective trauma, and so many people moved on like it was nothing. as if it never happened. But it did. I’m reminded of that every time I look around.

I want to go back in time. I want to sit down with myself from the day of this original post and tell her everything. I want to tell her not to lose hope, because I know she will. I want to tell her to soak up the moments she doesn’t know are limited. I want to tell her to be brave, but I know that when she wrote this post, she wore a bracelet that said those two words ‘be brave’ and didn’t take it off until it broke this year. I want to tell her that she will reach the other side of this, and things will be painful and different, but she will be alive. She will see changes that are night and day to what she knows, but that it’s going to happen whether she likes it or not so don’t waste the energy fighting it. I want to wipe her tears, tell her that she did everything she could. I want to hold her and give her a hug, one she knows won’t lead to her becoming ill. One where she won’t have to imagine the amount of germs on a person before hugging them.

I want to tell her that her mother gets COVID a second time, but that everything will be just fine. she wouldn’t believe me, most likely. I want to laugh as I tell her that she’ll carry around a bottle of Lysol for the duration of her mother’s quarantine. And I want to tell her that the first time she hugs her mother after the second bout of COVID will be the warmest, tightest hug of her lifetime.

I just want to tell her that it’s going to be alright. not completely. not entirely. it won’t ever be the same. but it will be alright.

and that’s how, the day this original post was made, was a turning point of my life.

PS: oh, and the contractors that I mentioned in the original post? they were working on my kitchen. I still don’t have a kitchen. But I have a bakery. funny how that works.

well, today was hands down one of the scariest days of my life. Yesterday afternoon my Grandmother (who moved in with me about 6 months ago) had just gotten home from Georgia. She was presenting a memorial for my grandad (fun fact: it was at the same place riptide took place in) and she got home and she was sort of sick. Nothing too bad, just congested and had a sore throat. We really didn’t think much of it but my mom decided it would be best to take her to the doctor in the morning

by morning time, my grandma was much worse. She was running a high fever, she was delirious and so weak that she couldn’t even get out of bed without help. I joked around and told my mom they’d probably quarantine her at the doctor’s office since she had been traveling between two international airports. I joked about the coronavirus, but I didn’t actually think it was a possibility.

until it was.

I got a text from my mom telling me to drop everything and take the antibiotics I have on hand for preventative measures (certain bacteria causes my brain inflammation to relapse) and even though I knew that antibiotics won’t help viruses, I took them anyway. I asked her why she wanted me to take them (thinking maybe either mom or grandma tested positive for the bacteria I was avoiding. which my mom did so it wasn’t entirely pointless to take another round) and I shit you not, she sends me a text saying

‘they think grandma may have the coronavirus from traveling’

I. Almost. Shit. My. Pants.

Survival instincts kicked in almost immediately. I remembered that the contractors had just gotten to my house to keep working on my kitchen renovation. At this point, I ran down the stairs faster than lightening and I’m like “guys you gotta get out right now, it’s not safe here. like my grandma just got home from traveling and she’s super sick and the doctors legit think it’s coronavirus, leave now!” and I know in some cases it’d be better to wait until the results came back so I wouldn’t be sending two possibly exposed people out into the world but they hadn’t been at my house long and all I could think was ‘oh my god they need to get to safety or something. they’ll be exposed’. so I hauled these two poor guys out of my house, praying they won’t get sick. at this point, I didn’t even care if I was exposed, it was just like oh shit we need to get everyone out. 

it turns out, the doctors didn’t actually know the protocol on how to handle coronavirus. none of them do. they only find out the protocol after they call it into the CDC and say they have a suspected case — which they had to do since my grandma was showing pretty serious signs that she had the virus. even then, they don’t tell the doctors about the next step of the protocol until the first step is cleared. so like, the CDC told them to gear up and after that, the CDC started to explain to the main doctor how to diagnose it. like, the doctors didn’t just have the knowledge on how to diagnose it or even treat it yet. My mom said that it went from being one nurse to like 4 entirely geared up doctors examining both of them in sort of a makeshift quarantine. 

At this point, I’m full-blown shaking like a leaf in the wind I’m so scared. To see my grandma go from having just a head cold to being beyond sick with a 103° fever and lethargy along with a violent cough, it was horrific. 

Here’s the even weirder part. When the official doctor came in (her name is pam and she’s so cool I love u pam), she never actually said how she knew it wasn’t the coronavirus. They tested for strep (the bacteria I absolutely can’t come in contact with, and my mom’s came up positive later; hence me starting antibiotics again for prevention) and the flu and those were both negative for my grandmother. (my mom’s was originally negative for strep but they called later that night to tell her it ended up becoming positive) but they never actually did do a test to determine whether or not it was the coronavirus. No screening, no labs, nada. We see the list of ‘symptoms’ online a lot, all of which my grandmother was showing. So clearly there’s something missing, something we aren’t being told because despite having all of the symptoms AND having been in 2 different international airports 4 times in the past week, they somehow deciphered that she didn’t have it. That worries me. Not to sound like a total Illuminati conspiracy theorist but like?? what the fuck aren’t we being told?? what changed your mind??

I was deadass waiting for the fucking CDC and Hazmat to come to my house, I thought for sure they’d admit her into a hospital in the city. it was WILD. I was trying to rationalize with myself (and Cait was also trying to rationalize with me lol) but like, how else could I explain it? She just got so sick, so quickly. Never in my life have I ever seen her so ill. 

My point is guys, TAKE THIS VIRUS SERIOUSLY! I know a lot of people are saying it’s nothing. I know there are only 5-6 confirmed cases in the United States but this is a VERY SCARY THING TO GO THROUGH and I swear to you, it’s worth it to wear the mask and wash your hands frequently. I know most flights in and out of China are banned right now but all I could think was like ‘oh my god, how many people are flying in and out of Washington D.C. and Rochester and going to other places.’ like, you never know.

This whole time I was joking around about coronavirus because you think ‘there’s no way it could ever happen to me or someone close to me.’ but IT CAN. IT ALMOST DID. 

and that’s why today was fucking TERRIFYING. 

[oriixxc]

2020 vs 2024

[fennecfiree]

for my animatic im working on ( I FUCKING HATE DRAWING THIS OLD HAG WHORE I FUCKING HATE HIM SO MUCH

[customizablefriend]

My true self still loves Tommyinnit I am still an inniter at heart I have not changed

[glassofpumpkinjuice]

it actually makes me feel insane the way people don't think covid is still a problem. i am doing a phd in neuroscience and the people around me look at me like i'm crazy for wearing a kn95 mask every day. covid causes severe damage to your brain and even neuroscientists don't want to protect themselves from it because it makes them feel bad. every 'low' on this graph is higher than the previous 'low'. it's not going away just because you pretend it is.

[milomaxxy]

Something I wish I could vent about without IMMEDIATELY getting fucking dogpiled by people who have zero fucking critical thinking skills and automatically assume shit about me, is how covid (and having long covid) has affected my ability to mask.

I got covid (at least) twice- and that's what I tested positive for. I have long covid now, and that affects so much that I do. I can't walk as far, I can't tolerate the heat as well, I can't eat or drink some of the things I used to, my sense of taste has wildly changed, and more; but the worst part is how it affects my breathing. I can't breathe without basically panting anymore. Even lying in bed right now, I can't breathe properly and have to breathe through my mouth to get proper air flow. If I get too hot, or even too warm sometimes, I end up gasping for air like I'm actually choking on the air I'm breathing. My head gets light, my vision blurs and gets dark spots, my mouth gets numb, my limbs tingle and prickle, and I get an overall weakness. Hell, there's been times I've almost passed out from it and had to sit down bc I couldn't stand.

How does this affect masking, you ask? Bc with my regular breathing being hindered already, any kind of extra hindrance can really fuck me. Like, quick in-and-out, less than 5 minutes? I can do it, not perfectly fine, but not really worse off. If I have to actually take time somewhere tho? Like, if I have to do grocery shopping, or go to an appointment, or do my taxes? It has made me actually end up having AMR (the ambulance) called for me by staff before. Bc I basically fainted (for like 5 seconds), fell over, and looked like I was actively dying. I've had to take breaks while grocery shopping bc I have issues breathing as is, but wearing a mask makes it genuinely Difficult To Breathe to the point of hurting me.

And it fucking sucks, bc I DON'T WANT TO BE LIKE THIS. I don't want to sound like a fucking anti-masker who probably thinks covid was made by the U.S. government when I try to explain my health problems. I don't want to have to disclose the fact that, even tho I followed ALL THE PROTOCOLS, other people got me so sick that I can't wear a mask without hurting myself. I don't want to have to disclose my medical information to have a "valid reason" to "break the rules" bc I KNOW how important masking is. I KNOW what the risks are, and I DON'T WANT to take those risks. I'm basically stuck between the decisions of "wear a mask, but not be able to breathe and end up in the hospital *again*" or "don't mask, risk getting sick again, and deal with people who don't want to hear eXcUsEs". As if "I genuinely can't breathe even sitting down and resting, much less moving around with a mask on and I HATE that" is an excuse and not me trying to explain how much I don't want to have to even think about not masking.

I just really wish I could vent about how much I want to cry about this, without someone accusing me of lying about my health. Without someone accusing me of being a fucking fascist, anti-masker, antivaxxer, POS just bc they don't believe me. Fuck

[muttsterion]

A theory I have for Post Covid is Kenny already figured out that he needed to screw over Heather Williams in order to get his friend group back together. He knew Cartman would end up homeless too. But he wasn't satisfied with this outcome. So he tried again hundreds more times looking for a victimless way to fix everything

I rather like that theory. I'd like to think Kenny did everything in his power to find a timeline where everyone got as good of an ending as he could get them, even Cartman. Kenny would still consider him as part of his close friend group after all. But no matter what he tried not even Kenny could help Cartman with his destiny. Perhaps everything else that was needed to fix the broship was in place but that was the main reason Kenny kept going back in time to try to fix what he couldn't. So perhaps he thought maybe his friends could fix it instead..but alas they couldn't fix it either. I'd like to think they tried their very best. And that maybe even after Cartman wound up homeless in the Post COVID ending maybe Kenny still tries to help him, still tries keeps in touch. Even still talks with him whenever he has the time.

Kenny was loyal and stubborn enough to his friends to build a time machine to fix their friendship; maybe he was trying to make sure even Cartman wasn't left behind...ha even though they all left him behind first.