Covordidities

Guess I shouldn’t have shot my mouth off about people reveling in their various diagnoses. Looks like Mrs. Orr has the ‘rona.

She wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and we thought it was a sinus infecton/allergy thing. She laid low most of the day except for a brief errand excursion, and when we retired, she seemed fine. Around 0300 this morning, my wife began coughing uncontrollably. She’s done this on and off for years, and it’s a very frightening thing. She says that she can literally feel her throat closing up, and this induces a panicky state, which makes her breathe faster, which turns the whole thing into a debilitating cycle. We got up and came into the living room and sat, and after a while, she was able to breathe normally, more or less. I fell asleep on the couch and my wife fell asleep in the recliner, and we rested until it was time to feed the dogs.

But in late morning, she was feeling worse, and we broke out the Covid home test, and the result was positive. Her chest is very congested and she’s still having difficulty breathing without a coughing jag. I made a very fast trip down into town to get expectorant and lemons, and we’re hoping the combination of various things will help her. She knows I’m worried. More than just about anything, I fear her becoming unable to breathe and having to be hospitalized. I would give my life to keep her from falling into the vicious medical machinery that is modern healthcare. I pray it does not come to that.

Right now, Mrs. Orr is eating some noodles in broth and drinking tea. I am watching her and thinking my thoughts.

***

This morning while we were sitting and trying to be quiet, we decided to watch a movie that we’d back-burnered some time back. The movie was Cry Macho, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. It was a waste of almost two hours. I truly hope Mr. Eastwood, frail and ossified gent that he is, lives to make one more movie to redeem himself from this one. The screenplay was on the par of an ABC TV Afterschool Special and the acting was in the range of a junior high school drama production. Nothing about it was believable. It didn’t help that a seedy and bloated Dwight Yoakam kept intruding into scenes. I’ve long respected Clint Eastwood’s directorial skills, but they seem to have finally deserted him, because the direction was clumsy and disjointed at best.

The single thing about the film that was enjoyable, except for the scenery, was the soundtrack. A sparse piano track played in the background of most scenes, and though I haven’t checked yet, I suspect Mr. Eastwood may have been at the ivories for these songs, since he is something of a casual pianist. The best song was a vocal, “Find A New Home,” by a singer I’ve never heard of, Will Banister. I will leave you with it here.

If you’re inclined to pray, please pray for Mrs. Orr. I am worried about her.

~ S.K. Orr