Editor’s note: Amigos805 welcomes guest columns, letters to the editor and other submissions from our readers. All opinions expressed in submitted material are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of Amigos805.
Armando Vazquez.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
This a cautionary tale and for now I am still alive! I thank with eternal gratitude my family, my God, and my ancestral Spirits for their continued blessing, guidance, and loving support. Gracias jefitos for the hardheadedness that you blessed me with. This virus from hell will not kill me (not yet, anyway). This narrative, then, is a personal account, it does not present any “expert” or scientific evidence to support or refute any claims. I write to document my trials and tribulation with the Covid-19 and the Long-Covid virus. And to share and perhaps provide firsthand information and hope to the public, especially those poor folks suffering from the many complications that have come to be associated with this horrific illness.
I am 72 years old and I was in great shape before the first onset of Covid which attacked me with a brutal vengeance at the end of July, 2022. I was bedridden for about two weeks. I became extremely weak, disoriented, and super unsteady on my feet. Stairs for the first time in my life stop being my exercise and dance partner, and now had become my tormentor. I could not navigate or ascend up the stairs. This became a huge problem for me because my house has stairs at all entry points. I became house bound for the first time in my life. I felt like a prisoner in my own home.
As a lifelong and serious runner and very active athlete I had always been happy to pay the price for my rigorous exercise regime. I have experienced and have suffering from deep lacerations, broken teeth and facial bones, muscle and ligament aches and tears, bone bruises, broken, twisted, mangled, and dislocated bones, sore neck and spine. I am the epitome of the old school very dogmatic hardheaded jock. No pain no gain, you have got to pay the price! So, I can handle pain and discomfort. But with the onset of Covid my pain level went through the roof, and it felt like the virus had invaded every joint in body. My body felt like I was on fire. The 24/7 pain was excruciating. I still don’t know how I got through those days. I really thought that I had descended into a slow one-way death march to hell.
What kept me alive and fighting was my mental discipline that I had developed as an athlete, and a never say “no mas” community activist. In the life that I choose as a community servant and athlete I had to develop an extremely thick skin and stubborn hardheaded attitude that nothing, absolutely nothing would, or could, defeat me and prevent me from reaching my objective. My only objective against the Covid-19 and the Long-Covid virus was to stay alive.
It was not the doctors or the science that kept me alive or nearly killed me. Let me explain. I got all my recommended vaccines as quickly as they were made available to my age group. I followed up with a booster vaccine. I seldom went out in public. I wore, and continue to wear, my face mask religiously. I honestly can’t tell you whether these vaccines or any of the other “safety protocols” that the government recommend that we follow helped or hurt me. All I can tell you is that I am still alive.
By mid- August, 2022 I felt that I was getting better, ever so slowly, but moving in the right direction. I was testing about twice a week and all of the test results were coming back negative. I felt safe enough to venture out of the house for the first time in over a month. The negative Covid testing was tell me one thing, namely that I was not “infectious” and getting better. However, my heart and mind were telling something else. I know my body better than most people, and it was telling that something was seriously wrong. Then to my horror I began to noticed that my arm and leg muscle mass had deteriorated significant. It scared the hell out of me, and threaten to destroy all of my internal fortitude. I looked in the mirror and I could hardly recognize myself. It felt as though my muscle mass was shrinking before my eyes. My hair turned gray, it seemed, almost overnight. I could not sleep due to the continuous buildup of phlegm and gunk that threatened to suffocate me to death. With each passing day I continued to test negative, yet, I could feel my body shrinking (dying!).
Then, at the end of September, 2022, the Vertigo hit like a battering ram, out of nowhere and without warning. The first Vertigo attack made me violently nauseous. I tried desperately to run to the bathroom before I vomited all over the bed. I did not make it. In my panic I attempted to take my first step. I lost all my balance and equilibrium and smashed violently into a chest of drawers. I tried to get up and fell forward again, like a tone of bricks, all the while vomiting all over the bedroom. I was finally able to crawl to bathroom, where I threw up and hugged the toilet all night. When I tried to close my eyes due to the weakness, exhaustion and misery that I was suffering the bedroom began to spin violently and I would become nauseous again. Since I did not have anything in my stomach to throw up, I was dry heaving most of the night. That night was the worst and most painful night of my life.
To accentuate the end of a miserable 2022 year I suffered from an acute Gout flair up and a nasty case of the Shingles. Yeah, my immune system was devastated by the Covid-19 and further debilitated and compromised by the lingering and mysterious symptoms of Long-Covid. I became the perfect host for all of the “super charged” viruses attacking my body, and I had absolutely no defense to fight these deadly “bugs”
Today is March 9, 2023, and I can report that I am on the mend. It has been an 8-to-9-month hellish Covid ordeal, but I am still alive and fighting. Ironically what almost killed me, also provided me with the time to remake myself. I turn to Eastern holistic wellness, that I blended with my own health and exercise philosophy. At the start of 2023 I started to practice Tai Chi. I started for the first time in my life to incorporate a rigorous stretching regime. I have cautiously returned to my running. I now fast intermittently and tried to follow the Japanese philosophy of eating only enough food to fill “half” and not all of the stomach. It is great common sense nutritional advice. And finally, and perhaps most importantly I began to meditate and listen and speak to my body, mind and soul. The loving advise that I received from my soul was always the same, “stay within yourself and be mindful and responsible of your inner circle, and no matter what never, ever, stop moving!” It sounds heavy but it is really simple common sense advise, namely that you, Armando, can’t save the world if you can’t take mindful care of your own holy body.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.