“How much do you drink?”
“I don’t know, maybe 2-3 times a week, 5-10 drinks total?”
“Yea...okay.”
“Yea something like that”
“Well I think you should stop for a while and we’ll run these tests again in a couple months”
“Well I’m going to Europe in two weeks do you think I can...okay...that’s fine.”
2020 has been a total meme of a year. Our society is perhaps as fragmented as it has ever been, but there still seems to be a consensus narrative: this year sucked. For most Americans, the COVID pandemic has brought about more stress and more hard times than almost anyone would have previously been expecting. People have had to adapt in ways that they never planned for, and face scenarios that seemed impossible. If anything has ever been universally self-evident -- surely we’re ready for a new year. Well, I for one am not yet ready for this to be over.
My “pandemic” began 9 months before the rest of the world’s did, starting with this seemingly innocent conversation with my doctor. It was just a routine check-up with my general practitioner, admittedly one that I had delayed for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. I had a small lump on my neck that a dermatologist had dismissed as inconsequential, and this current doctor didn’t seem to think it was a big deal either. I had been feeling normal, so aside from this unusual news that readings on both my liver and my thyroid were slightly off, nothing was wrong.
This was August 2019, and in the days that followed it became very clear that something was in fact very wrong. I hit a breaking point on my third day in Barcelona, suddenly becoming unable to walk for more than a minute or two without being overcome with exhaustion. It felt like an extreme hangover, but with no apparent cause to point to, and the more I tried to push myself to move around the worse it got. A tourist-vacation is the last thing anyone wants to be doing when they can barely keep their head above their shoulders. I stayed in bed for most of the remainder of the trip, with no indication that anything was getting better.
The last few months of 2019 feel like a lifetime ago. I saw maybe a dozen different doctors, having to go through scare after scare of ruling out conditions that I could have never previously dreamed of falling victim to. One of these instances involved a doctor suggesting that I might have some kind of lymphoma and stating that I should be “very worried” only to call me on the phone just five minutes after I had left his office to say that he had read the test results incorrectly and that I should forget the scary ideas that he had put in my head.
Two other doctors visits involved anesthesia, as these tests were starting to become so invasive that they required me to be unconscious. The worst of these was something called a bone marrow biopsy, where I had to have test samples scraped off a bone in my lower back. This one I was actually awake for.
2020 has been difficult. Particularly in the Spring, everyone I know was on edge more than usual and more prone to negative emotions than usual, and justifiably so with everything going on. I could sympathize with it all, but I was also completely unable to empathize. Spring 2020 was when I was finally starting to feel physically and mentally well, and I generally felt profound gratitude during a time when everyone I knew was feeling the opposite.
I have something called Essential Thrombocythemia, a disorder stemming from a genetic mutation in the bone marrow which causes an overproduction of blood platelets. The biggest concern for someone with “ET” is clotting, and that’s apparently what happened to me in 2019. The blood clot showed up in an MRI late in 2019, and from there the doctors were able to diagnose the condition. Fortunately people who have ET have a normal life expectancy, but they tend to complain of debilitating fatigue even after they’re on medication. I had become vividly aware of this concern.
One of the things I dealt with from August to January was a total inability to exercise. Every time I tried to do anything I would simply get more tired and increasingly anxious and frustrated. This was leading to a substantial mental health crisis, as the frustration kept mounting and the best method I knew for combatting that -- working out -- was unavailable to me. Well, I managed to turn this around early in 2020. I got my sleep schedule more in order and my diet tuned-in as much as I ever have. I started meditating every day, and I ultimately just decided that I was going to push through the distress that accompanied moving my body.
2020 was hard for me for reasons that don’t really align with the rest of the population. My ability to deal with the fatigue has dramatically improved, though it’s still a struggle, and I’ve continued to make health improvements in as many ways as I can come up with. Diet, sleep, and exercise have been ongoing projects, and more recently, I’ve gone to even further lengths to improve both my short-term and long-term health. Figuring out and learning how to implement these measures is bound to be a life-long process, and it’s one that I feel as though I’ve fully embraced.
So why don’t I want “2020” to be over? Well I do want it to be over, in most of the standard ways. It’s been more than 16 months since I’ve had any semblance of a normal social life, and I’d obviously also prefer that the people around me didn’t have to deal with all of this increased stress and anxiety. Going to bars, or restaurants, or sporting events, or even just to work would all be very much welcomed after spending so much time at home too. But at the same time, I’ve probably made more personal growth this year than in the prior 28 years combined, and it’s hard to imagine this could have happened without the bizarre combination of circumstances I was forced to deal with.
From Day 1 of lockdown, it seemed like an easy decision for me to embrace this new reality, much more so than it had been to embrace the new reality of a chronic illness. I wasn’t stuck at home at that point, but my lifestyle had already been severely compromised. It only seemed rational to focus on improving myself, because it had already become clear that improving myself was an absolute necessity. Over the past nine months I’ve been fortunate enough to be able work from home and also spend time with my family, but the most significant change has been this total devotion to my own well-being.
Most people seem to be incredibly anxious for the world to return to something resembling “normal”, but they likely never really considered this time as an opportunity either. Surely in many cases people had life circumstances such that their days became more cluttered due to the pandemic, but the majority of people seem to be facing things like boredom and loneliness as their primary obstacles. Once a COVID vaccine becomes publicly available, these new problems are largely going to be swapped out for the usual and more ordinary ones.
In the meantime, it’s still not too late to get on track before the rest of life returns to the forefront. “Trying to make the best of a bad situation” is about as cliche as cliches get, but it also tends to be a way forward that almost no one takes seriously. Rather than seeing change as an opportunity, it’s far easier to see it as an excuse. So as much as this pandemic and this year have sucked, I’m just not ready to be done with it. My external world has gotten worse, and I’ve chosen to use it as an opportunity to get better. And I’m not nearly finished yet.