This past Saturday, Trump was loudly braying to a small crowd of backwards sycophants in Tulsa about “slowing down” Covid-19 testing to lower the numbers, just as members of his own advance staff had tested positive for the virus mere hours before his arrival.
As I sat there, listening to the (fake?) news, I pursed my clammy hands together, nervously.
You see, the day after his speech, I was finally going to get my own Coronavirus test done, for better or worse. I’m going back under the knife sometime this week and, in order to get cleared for surgery, I have to make sure there are no traces Covid-19 in my system. And to do that, a hospital official has to administer a nasal swab.
As I drove around OU Medical Center on Sunday morning, looking for the drive-thru testing station, my stomach gurgled in a mixture of fear and anxiety. Even though I probably should be, at this point and time, I wasn’t as afraid of the virus itself as much as I am of things going up my notoriously dry nasal canals, where the slightest touch often causes nosebleeds that just don’t stop, sometimes for hours.
This wait was made interminable when it was discovered I went to the wrong testing area, an empty parking lot in front of a closed building. Through an irritating series of channels, including phone calls and security guards, I finally found out where I was supposed to go, in the parking garage of the surgical building.