Hi Kosworld,
I am a retired firefighter living just outside of Austin, Texas. I retired in 2017. My EMT license was still good in March of 2021 when a request went out for retired firefighters to help give Covid 19 shots as the public health clinics were overloaded. So a few dozen of us that still had our EMT qualifications stepped up and started giving shots. I had my first shot in Feb of 2021, but I had to take an overnight trip to Del Rio, Texas to get a shot at an HEB grocery store clinic. Getting an appointment in Austin those first few weeks were really difficult. Mrs. Manoffire was able to get hers in San Antonio.
I did that for about 10 weeks. I quit in May when my wife finished teaching. She teaches Portuguese at a local state university. (We are both Longhorns, but she is teaching elsewhere. We had some nice roadtrips last summer. Pompano Beach to see Brother in Law, up the coast to see various friends and relatives. Yorktown Virgina was a highlight for me. Then Newark and the Jersey shore, Pittsburg Pirates game, pre-Columbian mounds in Newark Ohio. Confluance of the Ohio and Mississippi in Illinois. Newark Missouri (smaller than Newark, NJ.) Another highlight was a night in Springfield MO right when it was first up in the Nation with Delta. By the skin of our teeth. The best visit war the www.nature.org/… Tall grass preserve with 2300 Bison. Super cool . I then flew to Seattle to care for my brother that had both cataracts and another complication at the same time.
While in Seattle my buddy here in Austin called me and asked me to come on board to again help with the City COVID effort in Austin. This time with Emergency Management helping with COVID logistics. I dislike that word. Mumbo Jumbo for warehouse person and delivery truck driver. But we supply materials to shot and testing clinics, isolation facilities, (leased hotels for the positive that don’t have a place to stay and the negative whose families have positivity in the household.) Drive around and deliver stuff. I also helped in assembling a 48 bed MASH-type hospital that has not been put into use yet. The beds in the hospitals here are at record or almost record levels here. The city as of yet has not staffed this stand-by overflow hospital.
This department being emergency Management, also is preparing, (our crew) is preparing about 16 shipping containers with cots and other supplies and distributing them around town for the next Texas deep freeze, hurricane or flood. 75 cots per container with food (MRE’s) and water. They are place at recreation and neighborhood centers. The city and about everyone else was caught flat footed frozen to the ground last February as you might have heard. At my church chapel, it was being used as a sleeping and warming center. When it started to thaw a bit, a pipe in out fire sprinkler system broke and the building was flooded. Black mold. About $600,000 or more in damage. We could not start meeting in the chapel again until 2 weeks ago.
I have done this job since August. I work in a warehouse that distributes COVID tests. They sent us home with a box of tests and we test pretty often. They sometimes ask us all to test on the same morning before coming to work.
So to get to the point, Little Miss Covid, Omicron edition got its revenge on me for giving shots. Delta couldn’t, but Omi just did. Mrs. Manoffire was feeling off today and I gave her a test. Positive. Son was vomiting all day. He lives in Austin with 3 roommates. He has not tested as of yet. In the morning I hope. He is guitarist extrordinaire, playing and composing and singing in his own band, Bad Cacti, music.apple.com/… . He also plays with Quentin and the Past Lives, Mya Ramone, Shilxh, and sometimes with Nicotine.
We are sleeping apart tonight until we get a handle on both being positive in the same house. I will miss a week of work, at least. Symptoms minimal. A slight occasional cough, runny nose, sneezing, but also the first tinges of discomfort in my left lung. Wife is coughing in bed trying to sleep right now. I will call nurse at 9 am to let Doc know and see what might be done. I don’t know at what point we will be eligible for monoclonal antibodies. Maybe Doc already has access to the Pfizer pill. Don’t know yet. I sure the hell hope we all stay out of the hospital. I will keep you updated. Right now I am taking Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream Therapy. This is as about as useful a therapy as hyrochloraquine urine therapy but tastes a lot better, but not recommended for the diabetic, which would be me. But now I am going to die anyway, amIright? Wife already has church friends recommending Doctor Quacks-a-Lot’s therapy with herbs and Invermectin. If God really loves America as much as we all think he does, may he strike down Donald Trump with a Zeusian (or even Seussian) lightening bolt. About 600,000 + times.
Will keep you posted. If I go hospital, from my phone or intubation tube. Stay safe. If I die, play Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “If I Loved You” at my funeral. Loudly.