I’ve always been lost without my calendar.  I make a note of bulk pick-up day. I tickler follow-ups in case business e-mail goes unanswered. And count backwards from every due date or arrival time to make sure I can make it.

But till COVID, I was never much for counting forward. Maybe it’s the catastrophizer in me, but even the briefest encounter with a mask-less face, and I scramble to remember today’s date and secretly add the number 14.

Same goes for wondering several hours after I picked up groceries if I wiped every single one down. And wondering if I actually remembered to wash my hands after I opened the mail.

Each time I doubt myself, I take a deep breath and make a mental note.

“If I can just stay well for the next two weeks,” I tell myself, “I’ve made it through the incubation period.”

Still well by Day 7, I quietly celebrate.  “Peak infection period’s over,” I say. “Odds are, I’m just fine and so is everyone else.”

I wish that pre-COVID, I’d kept a record of every twinge, every cough, every sneeze I experienced in a typical day. Writing it all down would have seemed neurotic then, but now  just a helpful reminder that normal life is full of blips  that usually lead to nothing.

I could have looked at the litany and remembered that my sinuses always run in the spring, Triscuits are so dry they always make me cough a time or two, and when it’s 98 degrees outside, I’ve always felt hot without running for a thermometer.

I used to ignore all that, but now I keep a stash of anxiety-soothing cough drops. One, and the symptom disappears before the heart palpitations begin.

When I am not popping cough drops, I am hosting conversations between my catastrophizing and rational minds.

This usually starts with a chart a friend sent that declares whether a particular symptom is seldom, commonly, or rarely associated with COVID.

“Rarely!” my rational self will be happy to note.

“Rarely” is not “Never,” the catastrophizer reminds me, and never fails to add that it’s possible to have no symptoms at all.

“Unlikely at your age,” responds my rational mind, to which the catastrophizer brings up all those times all the younger members of my family were puking their guts out with the flu  while I – exposed to them all – had not even one little ache.

The trouble is, I’m not so sure anymore whether the catastrophizer is actually catastrophizing or just being sensible.

The only way I know how to deal with all this day-counting and symptom-finding is to be perfectly attentive or take no risks at all. Neither is likely, but I’m happy to see that scientists and medical associations are trying hard to nail jelly to the wall and give us some guidance.

For example, one researcher suggested budgeting only so many risks a week.  If you decided to get your hair cut, for example, you would not also go inside a store to buy groceries.

The Texas Medical Association went even further and developed a color-coded point system for ranking risks from 1 (low risk) to 9 (high risk). This was helpful since it ranked activities I’m more inclined to do, like opening the mail or picking up restaurant carryout, as low risk and reserved the 9s for things like going to a bar or eating at a buffet.

For a moment, I was fantasizing about some sort of color-coded calendar system that would rule out counting forward during low-risk events.  But then I started looking at the outbreak numbers in Texas and its supposedly moderate risk activities. Would going to a dinner party at someone’s home really be just a 5 if the party was large, the house was small and had terrible ventilation?

Maybe the real wisdom is to remember that all this, bad as it is, is temporary and focus on that undetermined end point when it’s behind us rather than hopscotching through it a bit at a time.

Maybe it’s even smarter to focus on the present moment and how I can use it to make the end point even more splendid, with a little gratitude dance mixed in.

Especially on Day 14.

Copyright 2020 Pat Snyder