This is not a story about football, baseball, or any normally entertaining game. It was however, for me, a game of survival. I felt like a gladiator at the Coliseum, when COVID nailed me two years ago.

Very sick, I was yet determined not to let it get me. I finally said to Dear Richard, “We have to go to the hospital. I’m getting much worse and I’m not going to get better lying in this recliner.” In minutes, he had warmed the car, notified the E.R., and we were enroute.

The score when I walked into the hospital late that night was COVID 98, Marcy 2. I barely had a leg under me. Triage took place over the phone from the parking lot. “Walk in alone,” the nurse said on the phone.

Within 15 minutes, the team had taken my temperature, changed my clothes, added an oxygen canula to my nose, took a double handful of blood samples, inserted an I.V. lead into both arms, injected one bag with steroids, one with Remdesivir, and added a wallop of vitamin C to one of them. I had a chest X-Ray in the bed.

The entire E.R. staff was a well-oiled machine, although it did not stop them from being kind. They knew how terrified each patient was. They confirmed I had COVID, with a pneumonia in each lung, and admitted me. By the time I was given a room upstairs the next morning, I felt my score had improved. I’d stopped shaking, I was warm, and they had me propped up so I could breathe better.

I wrote, two years ago, about this initial experience, and the next five days as an inpatient. I wanted everyone to know what it was like to have the dreaded disease and to realize that the hospital team was doing everything possible to win the game.

After the initial first-person article, I wrote a few more followed by a six-month recap and a one-year lookback. My life’s game had changed. I felt like the town crier: “Don’t let this happen to you.”

A year later, I was finally up and about, except for the morning naps, the afternoon naps and the naps after dinner. But I had Long COVID. The gifts of Long Covid spread across that year: no sense of smell, no taste, hair loss, terrible sleep patterns, and always, the fatigue. The overwhelming fatigue.

This past spring, I had already made up my mind that I was not going to write about this again. I thought, “Let’s move on, put this game in history books and get on with life.” But as we all know now, it hasn’t gone away.

Then, more than a year after the illness, another challenge. I was not prepared for the COPD diagnosis from Long COVID. “No fair! COPD? I never had a cigarette in my whole life! Why me?” Just the idea of it was a serious kick in the butt. After diagnostic tests, came the medicines, the inhalers, the nebulizers.

I thought, “OK, doofus, this isn’t fun, but you know people with asthma and allergies that deal with this.” And by my age, just the everyday game of life doles out lottsa inconveniences.Then came the all-night oxygen machine, the size of a medium suitcase that wheezes beside the bed. It reminds me of the Sesame Street character, Snuffleupagus. Just as I was getting used to Snuff, along comes the “compressor nebulizer system.” I was annoyed. Actually, I was more upset than that, but this is a family publication.

The compressor nebulizer requires three different inhaled medicines taken in 10- to 15-minute sessions – three times a day. “You gotta be kidding me,” I said. The prescriptions read: “Morning, midday and evening.” Or when I manage to remember, such as afternoon, after dinner and before bed.

I insert medicated liquids from the vials into the tube receiver, turn on the machine, turn up the TV volume and try to watch Jeopardy! while I puff and steam. From what I’ve heard, both machines have been added to my game equipment – permanently.

Summer brought twice-weekly Pulmonary Re-hab appointments through autumn. My wonderful therapist taught me a lot, and I’m trying to use the knowledge.

It’s been a rude awakening: I didn’t smoke, although my late husband did; and I occasionally worked the smoking section on American Airlines flights, back in the day. But what really caused it? Ruthless COVID.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for the medicines, the machines. I am still here.

But as I said earlier, “Don’t let this happen to you!” It will change your whole life’s game plan.

I checked the scorecard this morning. It read Marcy 81, COVID 19. I’m gaining on it.

Marcy O’Brien can be reached at Moby.32@hotmail.com.