No one feels good these days. I know I certainly don’t. The terrible, escalating anxiety about Coronavirus has added to the anxiety that’s always lived within me, probably since utero, like a virus that can lie dormant, in control, but then suddenly erupt. It came back during the last several years as I witnessed the slow process of my husband dying. When he died three months ago, I first felt a mixture of both grief and relief. It wasn’t long, however, before I started to think about my own mortality. And now here comes the pandemic, overtaking the world.

Now we have something not seen since 1918.  Will I escape the Coronavirus, or at least survive it? I am in the “at risk” age range and have mild asthma, though my overall health is strong (of course, they say, keep calm because anxiety weakens your immune system, which makes me even more anxious!). And there’s that small funny-looking growth on my arm that has gotten larger in the last two or three months. I recently finally had a video consult with my dermatologist. She looks at the thing on my arm and says, “It looks like it’s turned into squamous cell carcinoma. Normally, we would do Mohs surgery, but all elective surgeries have been cancelled. Put efudex on it twice a day for four weeks, and hopefully that will buy us some time.”  Hmmn, I didn’t like that expression and felt my anxiety rising and began (as usual) to envision the worst possible scenario.

Knowing I was overreacting, I thought I’d better get to work on my taxes. Being busy has always been my remedy for anxiety. I tried to go into my Citibank account to gather the necessary information about the past year, but I couldn’t log in and a message popped up stating I needed to enter my new ATM/debit card. But I never received one. (Anxiety thermometer rising—what if I can’t get into my bank account?)

Deep breath.

I call the customer service line on the back of my now dysfunctional debit card, but it takes me two days to get a customer service representative (the robot always says, “due to unusually high call volume, your wait may be longer than usual).  When I finally get connected to a real live person the news isn’t good. “It seems your whole account has been cancelled,” she says. (What!?) “It’s for a reason; there’s some paperwork I don’t understand. I’m going to transfer you to a supervisor.” 

Tina the supervisor spent time looking at various things and then grimly reported, “Paperwork was received to block the account because you are deceased.” (What!!??) Only a short time ago I wrote a post about a dream where I shouted, “I am not dead!” But clearly Social Security didn’t hear me! “I’m obviously not. I’m talking to you,” I replied. “Well, the bank and social security think you are,” she said.  “No! It’s my husband who died in December, not me.” Someone obviously made a mistake, sending a notification that I had died. Hopefully it’s not one of those computer entries that’s incorrect and impossible to correct since all my accounts with Citi are now permanently frozen.

“Can’t you just unblock the accounts,” I pleaded. “It may not be that easy,” she said. “Go down to your branch office with identification for proof and talk to the branch manager.” “But I can’t!” I blurted, now crying. “I’m sorry to be so upset,” I said “I’m not yelling at you, but I’ve just lost my husband and you’re telling me I have to prove that I’m not dead, in person and with papers. My doctor told me not to go out, as I’m high risk, and especially not to be in close spaces. The manager’s office is tiny!”   

Only a month ago I was feeling grateful to be alive, to feel the sun on my face, to spend time with friends.  But now, I’m not only living in isolation, but find out that according to my bank’s computer records, I’m already deceased!

I feel like I’m living in a Kafka story.

Within two hours, it seems I have a reprieve! Tina calls back. They still don’t know what the problem is or how it happened, but Citi will unblock my account and send me a new debit card (and presumably will receive my next paycheck and be able to pay my rent and bills). But I will wait for my sigh of relief until I actually get the card and see that all is truly restored.

“Oh,” Tina said, “one last thing. You’d better call Social Security right away. They will not be sending you your benefits anymore.” Oh God. Immediately I call my local Social Security branch. They check my social security number and say, “You’re right. It’s your husband who is dead. You’re okay.” With that, I thought for sure this was the end of the story, but no!

Two days later I pick up the Fed Ex envelope with my new, precious debit card and proceed to activate it. I go online, get into my account, only to find… there is no money in it! The balance is zero! How can this be? Once again, I try to call customer service, only to be told by the same robotic voice that there is an indefinite wait. So, like it or not, (popping a half klonopin) I drove to my branch and risk infection. With my account nonfunctional, all my autopays, including my rental, will not be paid. My problems are beginning to escalate.

I catch the branch manager walking across the parking lot. “Mike,” I shout, “it’s an emergency! I have to talk to you!” He looks at me like I’m a crazy person. I sit inside his office, which does not allow 6 feet of space between people. Mike and another senior banker consult, trying to figure out the problem. These two people are wonderful. Finally, they discover since my call to Social Security two days before, they withdrew my social security payments from January and February, or as they explained, “retrieved,” them. They still think I’m dead! Their advice, “Go back and call Social Security.”

I drove home, made a cup of green tea to calm down, and called. After a long wait, I finally get a Social Security person on the phone. “I don’t understand this,” she says, “and don’t know what I can do except reinstate your benefits” (and who knows if that will even work?). “Can’t you make sure the system knows I’m alive? I ask, “I need to continue having my earned benefits and have the previous payments restored!”

 “I KNOW you are alive! she says, “I’m talking to you! But I’ve done what I can. Have a great day.” 

I totally lost patience. Hope I don’t have a heart attack and fulfill their mistake! Stay tuned…

People tell me how well I’m doing, that I’m actually thriving, that my life-force is strong. My psychiatrist—so supportive during my husband’s long illness—recently remarked that I’m an optimist, much to my surprise.

But I don’t feel as well as people think. I have times of anxiety—in fact most days, I feel it at some time or other. I still feel the need for a little klono pin (just a half of a small pill) to calm down. In fact, I had to take one on the way to see my psychiatrist. And now the unknown range or effects of Covid-19 are making it worse. We got a notice from our synagogue not to hug or kiss anyone and avoid shaking hands of the rabbis when we left. Now the CDC says people 60 years-old and over should avoid crowds and meetings, not just shopping malls and movie theaters, but even religious services. I’m feeling like I did during the Y2K scare, when some predicted that civilization would unravel, that banks, computers, electric grid, everything would collapse, even cars (with their computer chips) unable to run. At the time, I stockpiled some food and water, becoming increasingly anxious with everything I read in the newspaper, only to end up donating 149 pounds of food to the local food bank. 

I’m trying to avoid doing that panic buying this time (even though people have posted on facebook pictures of their “pantry” for surviving quarantine for the pandemic). The stores, including Amazon, have run out of hand sanitizer, aloe vera and rubbing alcohol to make your own, and no one knows when there will be more. How much Lysol do I need? Toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex? I have a reasonable supply of food (pasta, rice, beans, tuna, parmesan) and a case or two of water (nothing excessive) and (of course) a case of wine. I’m trying to figure out if large amounts of alcohol, especially tequila, might kill the virus.

Today, I went to pick up a few things at a small drug store, because I like to support independent small businesses, and the guy next to me told me people were buying “water bladders,” which are bags to attach to the faucet in a tub to fill it with 50 gallons of water.  “What the hell for?,” I said, “That’s crazy.”  “In case the tap water is contaminated,” he said.  Well, that’s a stretch even for someone like me who is prone to catastrophizing.

The widespread panic is doing us no good, but neither is the news I read today that there won’t be enough ventilators if the pandemic is severe, that our health care system is underprepared (combination of cut-backs, cost-savings and a government that hasn’t taken preparedness—or science—seriously). We don’t even have enough test kits for those with symptoms or to determine who to isolate. Even the idea of massive quarantine is something I never experienced in my lifetime—something I was only familiar with from knowing about the plague in early modern England! So, we still don’t have any other way of dealing with contagion?

Having grown up in a house of doom, with a father continually prophesying disasters that would cause the end of the world, I catastrophize. My brain (and thus my body) was affected by living for years in that house, maybe affected even in utero.  My tendency to universally catastrophize has been kept at bay for the last few years, because I’ve had to deal with the personal catastrophe of my husband’s progressive neurological disease. I had my hands full trying to take care of him, trying to keep off smaller disasters, like a stubbed toe that could be amputated.

And there’s the fact that after not quite three months, I am still in mourning. The Kubler-Ross paradigm of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance does not fit my experience—I never have experienced denial, anger or bargaining, and not clinical depression. Just sadness and grief. But mourning quickly morphed into anxiety (will I get a terminal disease? How long do I have? Will there be anyone to help me?), and that anxiety has combined with a new and different kind. Grief mourns loss, the past, anxiety is future-focused. What has been my personal, private post-traumatic syndrome now has something new added: Coronavirus, a global pandemic. Just two weeks ago I was having images of my husband wasting away. Now I imagine a disastrous future, the consequences yet to be fully understood. Living in a country where the current government has proven itself inadequate, cutting back funding for health and research by our president, a known science-denier, doesn’t help either. Now how am I supposed to deal with my anxiety? My instinctive fear pops up whenever I feel I don’t have any control. I’m not sure anyone has control. I know people who say, let go, it’s in God’s hands. But that’s not so easy for me, especially with the notion of God I imbibed as a child nursed by a doomsday father.

Still… Maybe an accident I had last week was a message meant for me—a message from a higher power in the midst of my gloom.

It was a beautiful day, and I was trying to focus on the warming feel of the sun, the bright blue sky, as I walked from my parking garage to Barnard, where I was to teach in an hour. Suddenly, bam! My shoe caught on the unevenness in the sidewalk, and down I went, hard, with my full body weight on the cement pavement. No broken bones; no bruises either. A miracle! Got up, and shook it off and continued to go about my business. Well, that’s what I get for just worrying about the future, trying to prepare, to take all precautions. Lesson: it’s the unexpected things that bring you down—something’s going to get you eventually. Or more optimistically, why not focus on whatever beauty or good things that I can find right in front of me rather than an unpredictable, unknowable future, even if that’s easier said than done?