Victor Davis Hanson
I once stayed in an old house on one professorial stint. The basement had a sewage leak. No one knew of it, given it had been locked up for the summer. When I arrived, the house was full of mold, or so I thought, despite living in a desert climate with no experience of it.
After a week of fever and headaches, I ventured to open the door to a staircase to the basement—one foot of raw, old, and stagnant sewage was there from a broken sewer main—a virtual cesspool in the basement for months before my arrival.
By the time I got home a month later, I had a terrible fungal sinus infection. Two nasal stent surgeries followed 8-9 bouts of antifungals and antibiotics. Five years later, massive but successful sinus surgery. I chalked that up to my fault as well: who is so stupid to work in a house and ignore a damp foul odor and assume it is just stale and has no idea he is sitting atop a veritable black liquid lake below?
Next, in 2014, a carbon fork on the road bike shattered, and the wheel froze and locked. My feet were buckled to the stirrups. I went head over the handlebars, hit the pavement face first, and was knocked out. (In the Covid daze, I rationalized I should have had the bike periodically checked for micro-cracks.)
I woke up with four shattered lower teeth (over the next year replaced with implants), a fractured nose and cheeks, a concussion, and soon 140 stitches in the face and inner cheeks, and both upper and lower lips severed—and a tour to lead in Italy in eight days, whose details I still do not remember (other than the doctor’s advice: do not fly with concussion for a month).
Doctors are often wise––if not candid––in urging their patients to avoid professionals like themselves. The Fresno ER doctor said, “You look worse than my usual paralyzed victims from horse falls or bike accidents. So why not junk the road bike, get a fat-tire aluminum clunky replacement, and burn more calories at a slower speed.”
That was good advice, and I followed it to the letter. I gave away the wrecked road bike and a spare bike a month later.
I’ll skip that sequel to the disaster except by mentioning that I have always been dependent on the kindness of strangers.
One neurologist told me of the bizarre electrical buzzes that two months after the accident shot down my arms and legs every time I bowed my head to my chest: “This is Lhermitte’s sign and will likely go away if you are careful. It is likely from a hyper-neck extension or whiplash, and you bruised your spinal sheath. So do not let an operation-happy surgeon operate on your neck. And you do not have MS. You do not need to go to rehab. Just stay calm and quiet. Just wear a neck brace.”
He proved uncannily correct. He predicted one year of shocks. And, presto, 13 months after the bike accident, the electricity magically began to disappear.
I could go on, but these are the thoughts that go through your mind in Covid’s 103-degree stupors. The patient blames himself for getting infected again, cites the past maladies all as preventable, and surmises that the present bout is likewise due to “excess” and was preventable—and is the ultimate end to a disaster-prone half-century trajectory.
And then, as the fever recedes three days later, the mind takes over from the mindless dreams, and you say to yourself, “Who cares? You’re still alive. Whatever—time to get up, get out, and get back at it….”
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