Covid Noise and Norms

Looking back over my 'Covid Diaries' (recall here; here; here; here; here; here; here); and here), I realize they reflect a selection bias of my best moments. They can't really do full justice to my incapacitated stretches. What has remained constant is that on any given day, it's hard to say that I am really getting better: because I always remember a day or two or three ago crippled with headaches or the sudden onset of hours of what I have been calling 'upper head fatigue.' Even very good days (like today) are overshadowed by awful insomnia that has me normal tired throughout the day. 

Yesterday morning I awoke feeling great after a solid night's sleep. After a leisurely morning, the upper head fatigue set in just before Noon. I couldn't shake it off during the day; rest, fresh air, watching the Fast and the Furious (7), a banana-honey milkshake--none of it helped. By the late afternoon it caught up with me and I was very depressed. I seriously considered watching the battle of Helm's Deep to put myself to sleep--I imagined trying to explain to Seneca's ghost the equanimity that follows from watching uruks and orcs being slaughtered.

And even though I spent most days in bed, in a wider perspective I am clearly better than I was a month ago. And nearly every week I am capable of saying that. I often have a few clear hours each morning, and this week my strolls around the block are turning into modest walks down the hill. But even that depresses because when I go back up the hill, I am aware that I am carrying more weight than four months ago. 

Yesterday 'my lecture course' ended. Because I got sick so close to the start of the course, and because it's pretty difficult to find somebody on a week's notice to teach a course on the history of political theory in comparative fashion, my director of undergraduate education decided to replace my lecture course with recordings of my lectures by me of last year. (Nobody made morbid jokes around me about that dead Canadian professor whose recordings were used.) The course had more than five hundred students enrolled in it, and that's a big responsibility to hand anybody on short notice.

My wonderful political theory colleagues stepped up to do weekly Q&As (after having to watch my lectures, too), and I was assigned a student assistant and an instructor who coordinated the electronic interface with students and who helped create the exams. We switched to weekly multiple choice exams. Most of the questions were mined from my exams of the last few years, and the instructor created new questions. My main job was to sign off on the exams and answer student questions.

Once the course was up-and-running this set up turned out to work adequately. I would spent at most an hour a day on this (broken up in intervals of 15-20 minutes). The contact with the students was a life-line to the outside world, and cheered me up. The students were amazingly understanding and sweet toward me. I don't regret it. But in hindsight, it turned out I had to do a lot of work in January when I probably should not have. Even well organized courses have a lot of minor decisions to be made by the formal instructor: books were not delivered, copyright laws prevented us from sharing them online; understandably not everybody welcomed multiple choice formats. And I even spent time having to set up special zoom links for groups over 500.   

I suspect I was depressed yesterday because now I am alone with my illness and my anxieties without an activity that distracts me. When the brain fog lifts I try copy-editing proofs that have been piling up in short intervals. I am still not quite capable of concentrating on unfamiliar material, but when I read my proofs I am at least somewhat aware of what I am trying to say. A senior scholar, who after reading these covid diaries confided in me that she has had chronic fatigue syndrome most of her adult life, told me she works very fast in the good periods. Parents with infants also learn to do that.

Another scholar who read my covid diaries told me that some of my symptoms -- involving excessive irritability to certain kinds of noises (music, singing, eating of food, talking to more than one person) reminded him of his misophonia. I had never heard of it before, and so had to look it up. When I shared this on facebook, I discovered that more than a handful of my friends and professional philosophers suffer from it or have family that suffer from it. My scholar-friend who suffers from it cannot tolerate people eating in his vicinity. (He told me he is incable of lecturing if somebody is eating even a bag of crisps.)

Misophonia is a badly understood and awful syndrome; it must be hell on partners and family. Even during my worst periods of Covid, I don't have it all the time. It primarily accompanies the period of head-fatigue (which are also periods of incredible food craving). But it made me reflect on the start of my illness. 

In December I had a few periods of intense dizziness, which I have tried to compare to a rocking of the boat. I tried to combat it with rest, but insomnia kept me awake. Each time after a few days the dizziness eventually went away and I returned to my normal life. You may recall that because all my vitals were normal, my GP initially assumed that I was stressed. While I protested this at the time -- these dizzy spells also started after days of 'holiday' without any obligations --, I initially quietly wondered if she was right. Because I had been unusually irritable. (This is a tell-tale sign with me of anxiety and stress.) But I now wonder if I was already responding to the virus. 

I want to close with one more extended thought. I have been blessed by supportive family, and many well wishes from friends and academics; luckily my employer is all on-board with giving me time to rest and recover. Nearly everybody I interact with is familiar with tales about long haulers. And so I don't feel overlooked or ignored. (And as the above notes, I am incredibly lucky that my colleagues stepped up to do extra work.)

In my better moments I try to think about the politics of disability in a profession that tries to ignore it. And I have more admiration for and compassion to all our disabled colleagues who function at incredibly high cognitive level day in day out. 

I feel my experience casts some doubt on the 'naturalist' (even Quine-ean) assumption that our philosophical skills are a mere extension of our ordinary cognition not different in kind. In many respects I have regained ordinary cognitive skills, despite being philosophically incapacitated. (Yes, I know that this very paragraph involves a practical contradiction--but the philosophy I do here, I do kind of obliquely in my best moments glancing at what I can be in this format that because it is already my own acts as my cognitive scaffolding). Professional philosophy involves cognitive skills that are extremely rarified and requires the co-participation and co-constitution (Catarina is surely right about this) of our interlocuters.

But more important, because my disease has no natural state -- I can at present never rely on my 'normal' functioning to last the day --, I don't have (for lack of a better term) the self-trust that able-bodied and less-able bodied (learn) to have. Or, not to put too fine a point on what I am trying to say, even the disembodied Cartesian meditator has some trust in being able to continue in his way of being from one moment to the next (even if metaphysically he relies on God securing this). In my worst moments I can't trust my own inferential practices or even any practical skill. While I have not had near burning down the kitchen incidents anymore, the common accidents still continue--this morning I dropped the glass tray from the microwave.   

We are not really aware of such self-trust until we lose it, although I wouldn't be surprised if enactivists have tried to capture features of it. So, here I am, again, trying to convey what it's like to be aware of having a mind that's manifestly not itself, using a skill that is the long shadow of itself, while bumping up against the norms of thought that whisper 'exit here for madness'.