Over the past few months I’ve had a lot of instances where I’ve been able to say things like, “A year ago, we had no idea we’d be buying a house Texas.” Or, “A year ago today we closed on the house, but we had no idea we’d be leaving Abu Dhabi only a few months later.” Today I get to say, “A year ago I had to get my booster shot and that was the beginning of the end of our Middle East ride.”
I’ve talked a lot about what life was like for us over there during Covid, but I’ve never written about it. First, because while living there I could have gotten arrested for saying anything negative about the government, whether it was true or not. It wasn’t wise or prudent to put anything in writing over there that was anything less than glowing. After getting Covid I sent a video message to a handful of friends, ranting about what I had endured, and then panicked for 24 hours that it was somehow going to go viral and I would get locked up, fined or deported. (even now I’ve shied away from mentioning the country itself in this post, which is out of habit I guess.)
Second, I stopped writing about our lives because it took everything out of me to get through our days without succumbing to bitterness and anger. (Josh and I spent a lot of hours hashing and rehashing the latest rules, trying to predict the next steps the government would take, and their reasons for choosing one path over another.) We carried around a constant low level frustration about all the restrictions that we had to live with and that irritation increased the longer it went on. Especially once the rest of the world, including Dubai (less than an hour away), went back to normal. When I write about something I have to relive it, parse out the details, and decide what to share and what to skip. It was hard enough to live through it the first time and I was afraid that dwelling on negativity would suck the rest of the joy out of our time there.
But this anniversary marker is a happy one. It wasn’t at the time — it’s the event that confirmed we were moving to Texas, job or no job. But in hindsight, we were on the precipice of a new life — a new adventure, that came at the perfect time.
Why was the Covid booster shot the final straw? Because it was the quintessential example of how the past two years had gone for us. After getting stuck here in Texas because Caleb tested positive for Covid (that story is here) , Josh returned home to Abu Dhabi with Camille. He woke up the next morning to go to work and his app that proved he was vaccinated and declared his negative covid status (that was checked upon entry to every public place — work, school, church, shopping, etc) had turned from green to gray, meaning he was barred from everywhere.
Why did that happen overnight? Because the government suddenly decided that everyone who was fully vaccinated needed to also have a booster shot, and that booster shot requirement was effective as of YESTERDAY and anyone who didn’t have a booster was barred from participating in public life until they were injected.
On a completely unrelated note, the day before, a missile attack from Yemen was intercepted over the skies of Abu Dhabi, the second in one week (the first having hit and killed several people). But when you wake up unable to go to work, suddenly that gray status becomes the primary concern and figuring out how to turn green again silenced all talk about missiles or the safety and security of the country. How convenient. (In contrast, when Saudi Arabia required a booster shot, they announced it 4 months before implementation, giving everyone plenty of time to prepare and either exit or comply. Hmmmmm.)
Josh had already made getting a booster shot his line in the sand. Both for him and Camille, no go. Either of those requirements would be the sign that it was time to leave the Middle East. But now, it’s the end of January. We have had zero notice, we have a son who has 4 months of school before he graduates, what do you do?
First up, it was decided that we would move home in June. Done. The writing was on the wall. I was so frustrated and angry, I felt like saying, “screw you AD and your stupid unreasonable rules! I’m never coming back!” and staying in the house in Texas and letting Josh close up shop over there and join me whenever. But that would only hurt me and the people I care about: our friends from church, the gym, from school, our life group, my coworkers, the kids at school . . . I wanted to finish well.
And in order to do that, I had to get the booster shot. I told Josh it was his decision either way, but that I was concerned for his health if he had to spend the next 5 months locked up at home, unable to go to work, unable to go to church, unable to go out to eat or to the gym, unable to go see our son graduate from High School . . . that much anger and bitterness is terrible for a body and mind. There was no waiver, no covid testing substitutes (we still had to test every week or 10 days to stay green after the shots). No shot, no entrance.
So we both got it. (It took him 5 days to get an appointment as the entire emirate was in the same situation and scrambling to get their green status restored). I was fine, he was not. 30 minutes after his shot, he felt a burning and pressure begin in his chest that didn’t let up for months. His lymph nodes swelled up to the size of tangerines and he couldn’t take a deep breath without pain. He spent the next several months visiting heart specialists, pulmonologists, doing a stress test, blood work, etc and no one could explain it other than no one knows what a new vaccine will do when applied to a wide variety of people. Some people lose when you roll the dice.
I suspect that he had covid at the same time Caleb did and having just been exposed to it or having had it the week prior, his immune system was on high alert and over reacted when he was boosted. Long story short, it has taken him a year to recover and only in the last 2 weeks have we noticed that his physical capacity and lung recovery is back to what we remember as normal for him. Which lines up with studies that are showing that most symptoms of long covid resolve within a year. Happy for that. Angry that he was forced to get both the vaccine and the booster in the first place. Happy that we now live in Texas where we are free to say NO to any further demands.
Happy anniversary to us!