KIDS STRUGGLE WITH LONG COVID

by Marissa Piesman

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Marissa Piesman, lawyer, mystery writer, knower of information is our first guest.

Write us if you’d like to propose a column.

KIDS STRUGGLE WITH LONG COVID

I contracted what I considered a mild case of Covid in March of 2020. I stopped coughing, my fever went down, my diarrhea abated. I was enormously relieved until I picked up a book and found I could not read. I read the first paragraph five times. I remembered none of it. I was a recent retiree looking forward to never having to practice law again; to spend my days writing, going to the gym, taking long walks, knitting, cooking and going downtown. And, of course, reading.  I was trepidatious about getting back to normal and, as it turned out, I never did. I spent a few months training myself to become literate again. I turned to children's books. I started with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and then conquered Through the Looking Glass. It was a painfully slow process which took about a month. Then I mastered a young adult novel whose title I just forgot. Oh yes, Google tells me--Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I followed that up with a six hundred page autobiography of Kirk Douglas. I knew a man who had had an affair with him and I wondered if it would have been mentioned in the book. Needless to say, it was not. Eventually I regained my former level of literacy but remained highly distractible.

Writing presented another challenge. My spelling was atrocious. Every time I wrote a word that began with an “N” I put a K in front of it: KNOUN; KNOTHING; KNOTE. Totally pathetic. I tried very hard to monitor my spelling but I still, even now, eighteen months later, occasionally fall into the same trap. And cooking was a challenge; I'd forget the garlic in the lentil stew or I'd over-boil the pasta. And I, who practically lived on the A train, became afraid to get on the subway. Last year I had more than one maniac stand on the platform and give me his opinion about my face, my body, my hair and my shoes. I take a bus when I'm not strapped for time. I only have one success story and it's paltry. I have taken up knitting again--this time simple scarves. I find it soothing. I used to turn out beautiful baby sweaters with complicated cables. Now I don't even bother to purl.

My longest lasting problem from my dance with COVID is anomia. I forget names of people and places. I was somewhat neuroatypical as a child. In nursery school I assigned a gender to each letter, color, and number. At eight years old, I could recite the U.S. presidents forward and backward. I could do the state capitals effortlessly. It's all gone now. I was watching Jeopardy the other night and one of the contestants offered up an answer. The category happened to be U. S. presidents, my specialty. “John Tyler,” he said. “It's James Tyler, you idiot,” I screamed. I then realized that he was right and I was wrong. I had probably conflated John Tyler with James Polk and, perhaps for good measure, Zachary Taylor and James Taylor as well. I was on Jeopardy for three days in 1973 when I was 21. Now I cannot even summon up the capital of New Jersey. When I noticed that I was coming up short--often the names of places but also of people--I was initially horrified. I was a two-day champion and now look at me; it took me five minutes to remember Trenton.

I was angry and depressed until I read about Will Grogan and other high school long haulers in the New York Times. The article reported on the struggles that Will, a brilliant student, one who had delivered a remarkably complex discussion in science class the day before, forgot the material that he had just mastered. It looked utterly unfamiliar to him. He became so distressed that the teacher excused him to visit the school nurse.

The article suddenly made me realize how lucky I’ve been. I got a terrific education (thank you Bronx Science), practiced law for 40 years, wrote and published six mystery novels (all written on the downtown A train on the way to work) along with The Yuppie Handbook which got me into the OED. I own a co-op that is now worth seven or eight times what we paid for it. And, after spending so many decades in public service, I am now receiving a six-figure pension. Now all I have to do is walk the dog and remember to turn off the stove when the timer beeps.

I’ve always hated those ladies who complained about idiocy--they had to wait ten minutes for a cab in the rain or couldn't get an appointment for their blowout or sat behind a tall person at the opera. And now there I was, kvetching about getting John Tyler and James Polk confused. While Will Grogan, who might have been expecting to attend MIT, perhaps will end up parking cars.

Since I read about WilI, I can’t help but I think about what a good run I've had: born mid-century, without a penis. I did not have to worry about the draft and I applied to law school just at the time it was opening up to women. The year I graduated I could still find a government job and I managed to stay in the New York State pension system without any breaks for 36 years. I retired in 2018 so I still had two years to run around until the pandemic struck. Now when I come up short, trying to summon up a proper noun, I remind myself of Will. Here I am driving myself crazy, trying to remember the capital of New Jersey. And there's Will, perhaps facing a lifetime of cognitive deficits that descended overnight. Thanks go to the New York Times for giving me a reasonable perspective on this whole mess. And Will, I wish you well.