After I had Covid in 2020, I thought I’d lost my singing voice for good. Holy crap did I have it bad. Honestly, I had prepared myself for death. It’s a good thing it only lasted about 4 days, but the effect on my voice lasted a lot longer. Sometimes that recurs.
I do pretty well in Karaoke. I have won money doing it. Once in Colorado I just happened onto a Karaoke contest and won 600$ doing four songs. Michelle by the Beatles, Human by The Killers, Sarah Smile by Hall and Oates. I had to get into a sing off. I won because on the last song, me and the other finalist guy had to choose each other’s songs due to the crowd being undecided. Dude was really good. His family was there and everything. Dust in the Wind by Kansas sounds like a really easy song and that’s the thing. If you don’t know about this one kind of tricky part you’ll miss it. I know about it because I can’t perform it. I can never make that part work. That’s how I got him. For me he chose Brick House by The Commodores. I thought that was kind of dumb because it’s such a fun song and even if you make mistakes who’s going to notice? I locked it down OK I guess, but I had a riot with it, the whole crowd did. Sounds like one of those irony movies. I just went in there for pizza and a salad. I split the money with him.
There are these two Karaoke bars in San Francisco, across the street from each other. I’m sure there are dozens, but I was staying near these two. I went into one of them and sang Sarah Smile by Hall and Oates. It was the thing where the host holds a hat up in the air so the crowd can decide whether he should pass the hat. The crowd wanted it and I got 267$, including some 20’s. Then I went across the street and did the same thing and got 82$ in fives and singles. Not a bad haul for not even knowing that was going to be happening. When someone loves to sing they just do. Karaoke is a chance to sing, that’s all that is. I’ll take some cash though, f’it.
A couple of years after those things happened. I had a traveling job doing some commercial painting. That means it’s not residential. It’s malls, retail, institutional. I was in Vegas. Nevada was lying and saying there hadn’t been any Covid. Were they kidding? Vegas? Anyone with any sickness comes to Vegas and uses the international terminal at the airport and ends up where I was working at the Monorail, near the Convention Center. I mean, c’mon. It’s constructed out of germs.
Then it happened, I started feeling sick, and about halfway through the day I had to leave the job site. I didn’t think it was Covid. At that time, one of the many things they got wrong was that the symptoms were all dry. I was not dry. I had no idea where all the mucus was coming from. I didn’t know a body could produce that much mucus. It was ridonk amounts of phlegm and mucous for two days, right in a row.
Remember, Covid was still a mystery, and I didn’t have the Covid symptoms they were describing. Nevada had no mandates or lockdowns at this point. I had no reason to think I had anything other than a flu. I couldn’t eat anything the next day. My stomach felt really bad. I did a smart thing and went to the store while I could, and I got a bunch of soft fruit for the next day. A watermelon, some peaches, and bananas.
I just laid on the couch at my Hotel all day after that, and I felt like garbage when I went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night freezing, my teeth chattering so badly that I thought they would break. I had to crawl to the bathroom and get a washcloth to put in my mouth. Then I crawled to the thermostat and pulled myself up on the door jamb to read it. It was 71 degrees. I thought there had to be ice everywhere, and I was having auditory hallucinations. I was hearing people calling my name. It was the weirdest thing. Then I made it over to the closet and got the extra blanket, In a fetal position I covered myself with all the blankets. I went right back to sleep.
The next day it felt like every mitochondria in my body was being stabbed. My hair hurt. My fingernails hurt, my eyelashes hurt. I was on the couch with my eyes closed and I was literally ready to die. I felt like it was possible I could die right there. Music hurt, television hurt, thinking about the fruit in the kitchenette hurt. A few hours went by and things started to settle down. I ate some of the fruit and put my gross sweaty bed clothes and phlegm filled towels in the laundry. I didn’t feel well enough to go to work the next day, but on the fourth day I went into work in the afternoon and then got right back onto my regular schedule.
I’ll try to keep this part of the story short by saying that I ended up in California when the lockdowns happened. California is weird and paranoid all by itself, regardless of lockdowns, so needless to say I essentially, for lack of a better term, fled while I could get out of the State. I just bolted. I ended up back in Nevada in the Carson Valley, and I thought I’d better get tested in case that weird flu I’d had included Covid. It really did. My antibodies were thicker than Groucho’s mustache.
Since I learned about viruses in Jr. High and High School, I knew the antibodies were my protection and hurray, hurrah, rah rah, sis boom bah! I didn’t get the Trump jab. Almost a year went by and I decided to test again. My antibodies had waned. I thought I’d give it some time and if they kept receding, maybe I’ll get a shot. I tested again about two months later and they had gotten heavy again. I had been exposed and didn’t even know it. That was it. That was the final solution. There are none and there will be no Covid shots in my health regimen.
Only recently, in the last few months, has my voice straightened out. I can do scales again, I can hit and hold some, for me, tough notes. I can transition smoothly into and out of falsettos. It still crackles once in a while but for the most part I’m close to 100%. I use a lot more caution when I sing now. I think the situation has made me much more mindful. I’m afraid I’m going to irrevocably hurt something if I try too much too soon. But mostly, I’m thrilled I can sing again. The muscle memory is still there. That’s truly gleeful. The main thing about singing, in my opinion, even more than about the throat, is the breathing. But that’s a subject for another story.
For Health,
Herschel (Commercial Herschel) Sterling