Covid Experience

      I have not written about this past year because I really don't want to remember it. At first having everything shut down and wearing masks and attending church online seemed like an adventure - an experience. I like experiences. But then it became tedious. At first I knew no one who was sick or had died. Now, a year later, I still don't know anyone who has died, although obviously many have. But plenty of people I know have been sick and recovered. Including myself. 

My daughter and her son were sick with covid in October, but neither were seriously ill. We assume her two-year-old had it too, because he puts his mouth on every singly object in the house, but he would be asymptomatic.  They didn't get him tested. 

ON Tuesday, November 17th, I was feeling quite tired. My MIL and daughter and grandsons were over for dinner.  On Wednesday morning I woke up planning a trip to the grocery store, and then I was going to drop off some groceries for a friend who was quarantined and couldn't get out. I felt extremely weak. After just a few minutes, I realized I wasn't going anywhere.  In the afternoon I developed a headache and started running a fever. The next day I started blowing my nose and coughing. 

I called my doctor and described my symptoms, and she recommended I go to Chelsea for a covid test. 

I had already done this once when I was in Chelsea for a mammogram. I had a sore throat and this was when my daughter was sick, so I took the free test to see if I had it. We have to be careful because Tim's mother is in her 80s and frail. It wasn't bad at all. 

So I go tht nose swab test again. This swabber was not as delicate as the other one. It brought tears to my eyes.  We had to wait 5 days for the result. 

Over the next week my fever disappeared, but my weakness was so intense, I could barely stand up for 30 seconds before I collapsed into a chair. AS long as I was seated in the lazyboy, tilted back and relaxed, I was okay. I only had a fast-beating heart when I was climbing the stairs to my bedroom. I had achy muscles but not too bad. I lost my sense of smell on the third or fourth day, and that's when, even though I hadn't got my test results back yet, I knew I had the thing. 

It was fortuitous that my quarantined husband was there to take care of me. He waited on me, hand and foot. We tried to avoid him getting it, and he never did, even though he had been to the same places I had been to and was exposed to my germs often. 

The only time my worry meter started rising was when I started coughing up blood in my mucus. It was also coming out of my nose. I called the doctor and she asked me if it was bright red. I said yes. Then she asked if it was liquid pure blood or mixed with mucus. I told her it was mixed with mucus. She said it was likely that it was just irritation from all the coughing and nose-blowing, and gave me a prescription for prednisone to stop the irritation. She said to call back if it got any worse, but it didn't.  It was during this time that Tim bought me a pulse oximeter, so we would know if my blood oxygen was getting low.  It stayed at about 94-95. 

There was also this weird smell. It was in my nose. 

Tim asked me, "What does it smell like?"  

I couldn't tell him. I said, "It doesn't smell like anything I have ever smelled before, so I can't describe it. It will forever be to me the smell of COVID." I'm sure if I ever smell it again, I will recognize it. 

Looking back, I realized there were only four possibilities of where I could have encountered the virus: 1. Walmart on Friday when I went there to get my prescription. 2. Church on Sunday,  3. Lowes, although there the possibility was "Low".  and 4. the Big Boy restaurant where Tim and I went for a late breakfast after church. 

It took eight weeks to get back to normal, even though I felt fairly good after five weeks. There is no day that you turn a corner. It’s more like one day you wake up thinking the worst is over and you’re getting better, and the next day you realize it was all a lie. It seems like it takes forever. Don’t compare how you feel today with how you felt yesterday or even the day before. Compare it with how you felt two weeks ago. Then you will see that you actually ARE making progress.

My daughter and others told me it takes about eight weeks before one feels back to normal on a permanent basis. That was pretty close to what I experienced. I went back to teaching at about six-seven weeks and I could have used another week.

Suggestions:  Take vitamin D, zinc, and silver colloidal, use a vaporizer at night and take hot showers to breath in steam during the day.  Don’t fold laundry or vacuum or load the dishwasher for a long while. Let somebody else do it. I know it’s hard to watch your house go downhill, but don’t. Give yourself complete rest. 

Patience, patience, patience...  This is the perfect excuse to be a couch potato and watch old movies. Milk it for all it's worth.