Yesterday evening I had my first hug in 13 days.

My COVID became less detectable with every test I took, and last night’s test was totally clear. Ed’s tests have remained negative throughout my COVID, and so with our matching double negative (the only acceptable kind of double negative) results, we threw caution to the wind and hugged. We hugged hard, guys.

Real hard.

I won’t lie: when I first tested positive, I was terrified. I’m clinically extremely vulnerable, according to our local health organization. My comorbidities have comorbidities. I ended up having COVID for a total of ten days, and it was hard. I was tired, headachy, and once I coughed up a gross wad of grey stuff.

.. and that was fucking it.

Thanks to my three doses of the Pfizer vaccine, when I finally caught COVID, it felt like a cold. An extremely minor cold. In the grand scheme of Diseases I have Experienced, COVID ranks somewhere between “bad week for allergies” and “pulled a neck muscle sleeping”. It was nothing.

I didn’t come out of it unscathed, though: I still have a (tiny) cough, and my appetite and subsequent blood sugar levels are fluctuating wildly. And .. that’s it. Two years ago, this would have killed me. Thanks to the vaccines, all I went through was a week or so of mild headaches, and no hugs for 13 days.

I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of explain just how much of a nothing my covid experience was, because I’m frankly amazed. I’ve had paper cuts that were worse. Science is incredible. Thank you, modern medicine, for developing a vaccine that kept me alive through a global pandemic that has killed millions. We don’t deserve you, but you’re basically our only hope.

The end of May is around the corner, and for the first time in over two years, I’m excited about what lies ahead.