Roger Wolfson: From Near-Death to Superman

What it’s like to survive Covid and become immune

I’m not crazy about talking about my experience with Covid.  First of all, because not everyone is completely rational when it comes to the subject.  Most people in my life were supportive and helpful when I had it.  But a few shocked me.  “You must have done something wrong, to get sick, Roger Wolfson,” they said.  And even though my physician and the CDC say I am no longer contagious – some people still avoid me, well, like the plague.

Furthermore, I don’t like to talk about Covid because it was among the worst experiences of my life.  For seven days of the illness, I could hardly move.  I couldn’t taste or smell.  I was constantly nauseated.  I had no strength.  Making it down a flight of stairs was unbearable, making it back up, impossible.  Coughing fits that left me gasping for air.

And yet I was turned away by an ER because I could still breathe on my own.

Nowhere could I get a test to even be sure it was Covid.   And because I’m single, I had no one to take care of me.  No one could even come to my house.  I was all alone.

Eventually, some of my strength came back.  I think of all the things my recovery entails, having my appetite back is the sweetest.  There is something so jarring about knowing that you need to eat and drink in order to survive, and not being able to do it.  I spent hours desperate to drink a glass of Gatorade while every fiber of my being insisted I not drink it.  And if I did, I couldn’t keep it down.

Ultimately, it wasn’t until I was back to normal that I found a clinic that would give me a test.

As I waited for the results, I remember how frightened I felt.  What if what I went through wasn’t Covid?  What if this was in my head?  I was only ever diagnosed over the phone by a doctor who refused to see me.  Did I worry everyone in my life for nothing?

And then the doctor came back in with my results.  Congratulations, he said.  “You’re immune.”

I looked at him in shock.  He continued.  “You have no signs of the virus still being in your system.  But you do have the antibodies that beat the disease back.  You survived.”

I soon realized that these antibodies make my blood valuable.  I have an appointment this week to donate to the red cross.  I might be able to save lives.

I still need to distance myself socially, wear a mask, wash my hands.  And, my physician (and the CDC) could be wrong.  The disease might mutate.  I might be able to get it again.

But most signs point to people like me being a bit like supermen and women for the rest of the pandemic.  Guidelines say I’ve stopped shedding.  I’m not contagious.  Guidelines say I can’t catch it.   If they are right, then getting the disease early might have been a blessing.

If you haven’t contracted it yet, though, I’d still say avoid it if you can.  I didn’t die, but I came close.  And treatments appear to be on the way (if slowly).

But if you had it, or think you had it – find a way to get the test.  If not for yourself, for those around you, and so that the Government has the best possible statistics and knowledge in order to fight it on a global scale.

And even if for the moment those of us who have survived do have superpowers, that doesn’t mean we should behave as such.  We can still give the disease to others accidentally, by picking up viral elements from someone else and carrying it with us.  We have to take the same precautions as everyone else.

But having survived, I do have to say – the real superpower is life itself.  And Covid has restored my sense of that in ways I could never have foreseen.