Covid: A patient's confession (Part 2) & and a cautious climbing career
After getting all the jabs and avoiding the virus for 3.5 years, the bug finally caught up to me. Now I’ve got it. A few thoughts on entering the 2nd week of this plague...
All of us over the age of 70 know the dance that mortality does with us, whether we feel like dancing or not. We might hear that a well-known politician who was younger than us has died. The other week it might have been a famous hockey player. Then last week, a musician we used to enjoy. And so it goes. We cloak these passings with explanations that increase the likelihood of their deaths and diminish our own pending mortality.
In my wayward youth, I was fascinated by mountaineering. I even managed to do a small bit of very safe climbing in the Rockies and the Andes. Among the climbing community, whenever there was a death at altitude, a great deal of forensic analysis ensued. “What did they do wrong?” “Why were they on that route in those weather conditions?” And so on…The unspoken assumption among couch-bound observers like me was that the victims of the accident messed up. They made a mistake, that we, the sublimely superior armchair climbers, would never make.
At first, I thought this search for answers was a way of dodging our own personal vulnerability. Then I came to understand this mental jujitsu as a denial of our own mortality. Not that climbing isn’t a dangerous activity -- it can be, depending on who is doing the climbing and where it is taking place. Driving to the supermarket to do the weekly shopping can also be a dangerous activity. But there is a self-induced sense of drama when a death takes place high on a mountain that is totally absent when a death happens in the parking lot of a shopping centre. Both the climber and the shopper are equally dead.
When an accident happens in the mountains, it might have nothing to do with the people at risk. Melting ice suddenly tumbles, causing an avalanche. A rock fall severs a rope. An ice bridge collapses. A crampon falls apart at the wrong moment. Not all accidents are accessible to forensic analysis. Sometimes they are just accidents. Right place. Wrong moment.
Of course, when death calls, we all prefer to not answer the phone, at least for ourselves. For brief moments, I allow myself to reflect on the deaths that still occur every week due to Covid-19. As I used to do with climbing accidents, I protect myself with explanations and excuses. “Those of my age group who are dying of Covid usually have pre-existing health problems” or “They must have let their health slide downhill. I would never do that.” Etc.
I was never much of a climber. It is a risky business that requires extraordinary strength and endurance, to say nothing of nerve, none of which I could ever claim. What do we know of facing death from Covid? Having all the vaccinations helps to lessen the chances of severe illness or death. Being healthy and fit also decreases the chances of severe illness. But it still boils down to each of us standing alone against this microscopic virus. The Covid-19 virus does not care if we can do 75 chin-ups or free-solo a multi-pitch 5.13 route sight unseen. If it can infect us, it will do so and then do as much damage as it can.
Having Covid has given me time for such reflections, but little else. Fatigue quickly shrouds most of my waking hours in a stultifying blanket of muffled intentions. I postpone & procrastinate. Projects rise up as possibilities, then quickly melt into “maybe tomorrow” or “maybe once I get over this bug”. True, to date, I have not had even a taste of severe Covid. My breathing is fine. I have not been hospitalized; I haven’t even sought out a doctor. So, like the armchair climber who has read all of Chris Bonnington’s books, I am really very unqualified to say anything about safe route finding on near-vertical ice above 20,000 feet. I really don’t know what severe Covid sufferers are up against. And I really don’t want to find out.
Thanks for sharing - have been ignoring my possible health issues - the "invincible" aspect taking precedence. I realize today that that could be a mistake. Keep writing and sharing. Your thoughts are valid and appreciated.