Covid truly has ruined everything. Even getting a terminal illness.

The most human thing people do, when they’re given a prospective date of expiration, is they want to make the most of the time they have. They don’t want to waste it sitting at home. They want to drink, travel, have new experiences. Well, that is made impossible when everything is shut down.

The other odd side effect is even if you manage to do something, people get up in arms about you “endangering lives” and not continuing to quarantine. They shame you for not doing what they’re doing.

They’re allowed to feel that way, but what if you are given 3 years left to live. Would these same people be cool with sitting inside their home, waiting until they die? And even if the person with this disease caught Covid, they’ve already been deemed terminal. It is quite the ethical conundrum.

My husband was diagnosed with ALS in the time of Covid. He has approximately 3-9 years left, depending on his progression. And even then, that’s just living. He could have 6 months to a few years remaining where he can walk and move around on his own. At some point he will be wheelchair bound. When that occurs is all up to the disease and entirely out of his hands.

True to natural human desire, he and I want him to live everyday like it’s his last. We want to make the most of the time he has left. Whatever that may look like.

This previous weekend we wanted to take a trip, somewhere, to kick of his “Farewell Tour,” as we have dubbed it. Knowing that things are closed made our options real slim. I thought about just doing a road trip, but fuck if even that isn’t super difficult. Every time we made a pit stop every restaurant had their bathrooms closed to the public. I wanted to scream.

Ultimately we decided to visit family in Arizona. It got us out of the house and gave us a destination that didn’t require us to make plans or wear masks. We did still isolate and just spent our time in their homes, drinking; which made things awkward. My aunt got really hammered and started hitting on my husband.

“Have you ever had sex with a woman?” she asked, as we swam in her pool, in between the times she kept playing with my husband’s feet.

In the sober hours she had no recollection, or chose to ignore it. Which I am all for. Liquor makes people do the dumbest shit. And, boy, was she drunk. My favorite part was her telling us repeatedly how she had designed the layout of her backyard. “I’ve never designed anything, and I designed this. Can you believe it?”

I love her.

For a couple days we got to pretend that my husband isn’t dying.

While we were in Arizona, we decided to take a detour over to the Mayo Clinic. We may be getting our second opinion from this particular campus, since the hub’s primary at Cedars is referring him there, to one of his colleagues who specializes in ALS. If he’s accepted, that could very well be where we spend a good chunk of our time.

Overall, it was a good weekend, even despite the challenges Covid creates. It’s just super shitty to try and live while the world and the disease dictate us to not.