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I've had Long Covid.
Author: TriSec    Date: 10/30/2021 12:17:44

Like all of us, I was initially diagnosed back on March 13, 2020.



There was the initial infection – work stoppages, isolation, then growing despair and desperation. You all know how last summer went. At one point in time, we had a beautiful summer day in this city. The streets should have been full of people, and work should have been buzzing.

Boston was a ghost town. On that day, less than 100 people rode our tours. It truly felt like the end. Looking back on what was to be Lastday, It truly felt like death. I honestly don’t know how I completed what I thought would be my last tour ever on that day.

Moving on to what I perceived to be “greener pastures”, like most times you try to reach one, it proved to be a false idol. Where I went was actually convenient to home. The work was easy. But it was completely unfulfilling, and the people I worked with were mostly insufferable bastards, and a few outright monsters.

But what I found myself doing day after day in that driver’s seat was lamenting what was lost. We should all be familiar with the stages of grief, as well as that stress chart, and where I was going was not a very good place. It was so bad that it affected my health – my BP shot up, I was eating poorly, and sad to say, alcohol was pretty much drunk like water whenever I was not driving. I used to joke about that – “I hope it’s as easy to STOP drinking when this was over as it was to START when it all began.” I am pleased to report that yes, it was. But I was nervous about it for a while. One of my oldest friends has been alcoholic and devoted to pills for the better part of the last 30 years. I wanted no part of that.

When the tides turned at that job, they turned in a hurry. I became completed disgusted by the attitudes of everyone I worked with. When your guests (I never called them passengers) tell you that you’re the best driver they ever had, or when they openly tell you that they wish you could drive their route every day instead of that “horrible woman” (their words, not mine), or when a guest runs down the sidewalk to get on your bus because it’s you that’s driving, they didn’t care where I was going….that’s a pretty damn big red flag.

I walked away. Put my resume out there, and literally took the first job that gave me an offer. That turned out to be a mistake too, as the doctor I went to work for was being completely overwhelmed by the sudden growth of her practice. I’m not a receptionist; never will be. I struggled for about six weeks, and Doc and I mutually agreed that this was not a good fit for either of us.

But by then – something miraculous occurred. This Commonwealth had rapidly-increasing vaccination rates. Restrictions were getting lifted. People were coming back. President Biden said it during the month of June – Independence Day this year would be a return to something closer to what we considered “normal”. Reaching back out to some friends at the trolley – they were hiring everybody back, and it was a no-brainer on my behalf. I re-certified on June 30, and my first tour was on July 2. It’s like I have never been away.

But…sometime during that first week back, I pulled aside our general manager and had a bit of a heart-to-heart with him. My leaving last year was precipitated by some political comments I made online. With nothing better to do during the pandemic, somebody out there (never disclosed) had the time to research who I was and where I worked. At least that was the excuse when I got laid off. I did find out much later that most of the “upstairs team” got laid off last year, most of them to never return. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones.

But nevertheless – the GM and I agreed to consider that last year never happened, and “We all did what we needed to in order to survive.”

Although my health has returned, my alcohol consumption has declined, and I go home from work pleased and energized more days than not – the scars will take a long time to heal.


 
 

1 comments (Latest Comment: 11/01/2021 12:22:20 by Raine)
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