The sickest I have ever been was when I was three, when an infected abrasion escalated into a systemic infection that landed me in the hospital for a month. My mom couldn't visit me because my baby brother had been born mere weeks prior, and they couldn't risk any exposure to him. They moved a recliner into my room and my dad left my mom and infant brother to quarantine with me so I wouldn't be completely alone in the hospital for the last couple of weeks. I think maybe there was a window where they could wave at each other but direct contact was a no-go until I was completely recovered. I don't remember much about it.
The third sickest I have ever been was when I was in my mid 20's and got norovirus. For 24 hours my digestive system slammed into reverse so hard, stuff was coming out my mouth that looked like it should have been coming out another end. Sorry, is that too gross? It was so gross. I had no appetite for two weeks, but mercifully the worst of it only lasted a day.
I would take that norovirus again over Covid any day.
At the skilled nursing facility where I work, we had a Covid outbreak in May, if my memory serves. For a good portion of the summer we had a cordoned-off Covid wing. I spent hours sweating in personal protective equipment (PPE) working in close-contact with patients who had the virus. No eye-roll was ever hard enough as my friends and family on Facebook whinged how they could breathe in cloth masks, while I had an N95 donned for ten-hour days and my sweat made the plastic gowns adhere to my skin. In all that time, I never got it. As summer waned, our facility was able to clear out our cases, and I thought I was safe.
Then, in December, a case snuck in. I found out over a weekend a patient I had been seeing tested positive. I wasn't super worried; we still wore full PPE with patients in our observation unit, where new admissions were quarantined. I am not sure how it snuck past my PPE; I am guessing I reached up to absentmindedly adjust my glasses at just the wrong time and it got in through my eyes, but that's only a guess. Through my anecdotal experience, it seems like prevention is 50% proper PPE and 50% sheer luck.
On my weekday off, about three days after I had last seen that patient, I woke up with a cough. That wasn't a big deal on its own; since moving to Eastern Washington I have always gotten bronchitis every winter. I checked my temp to be safe: 98.1 degrees. Well within normal limits. I went out to an appointment, and then headed to the laundromat to do my weekly laundry.
It was at the laundromat when I first realized something was wrong. First, the always enticing taco truck wasn't appealing to me. The laundromat was fairly busy, so I was waiting outside in my car and staring at the truck. It was lunchtime, but it wasn't appealing. Second, as I went in to switch machines, I just felt...off. There wasn't a specific symptom, but it was that sort of generic rundown feeling. By the time my dryer was done, I could feel my chest congestion worsening, and I felt like an absolute trainwreck. The exhaustion was real. My boyfriend had come up to meet me at the laundromat, and I just looked at him and said "I think I need to go home, like right now. I think something's really wrong." He was disappointed that I refused to kiss him.
My laundry takes about an hour to wash and dry. That's how quickly I went from feeling fine to knowing something was definitely wrong.
I went home and I slept. And I slept. And I slept. And when I finally woke up, I felt freezing.
I turned to my boyfriend. "Is it cold in here?"
"Not to me."
"Fuck!"
"What is it?"
"I got a fever. The medicine cabinet behind the mirror has a thermometer...can you grab it please?"
I had a fever of 99.9. Not high, but definitely higher than what I took in the morning.
That was 5pm. At 6pm, that temperature climbed to 101. At 7pm, it was 102. My boyfriend started to panic. I told him I wanted to wait and if it hit 103, I would take a Tylenol (I was trying to let my immune system do its thing without intervening) and if it hit 104 we would go to the ER. Around 8pm, my fever peaked at 102.8 degrees. It came with a headache every time I coughed that felt like a hatchet was splitting my skull in half.
I texted my boss and my workplace's director of nursing to find out how quickly our weekly Covid swab results would come back. We got tested every week, but typically didn't hear about the results. No news was good news. I had been swabbed on Sunday, and today was Tuesday. I was told to come into work the next day for a rapid test.
The next morning my temperature was down to 96.9 degrees, and I looked up what the actual hypothermic limit was (below 95, if you were wondering). Just sitting upright felt absolutely exhausting, and standing was dizzying. My boyfriend drove me to work; despite my attempts to send him home he had stayed with me. One of the staff met me outside with the rapid test. We hadn't even made it home when I got the call confirming my fears; I had tested positive for Covid-19.
The next couple days my temperature danced between 97 and 102. The fatigue was the most crippling. If I wanted to brush my teeth, use the bathroom, and take a shower, I couldn't do it all in one go. I would have to lay down between each task and rest for five minutes or so. The coughing also progressively worsened; it was a deep chest cough that came with that splitting headache each time. My back also hurt like hell.
The boyfriend and I debated on how best to handle his exposure. Should he stay with me and ride it out, or go home and isolate but potentially expose his family in the process? After three days he went home, which I didn't agree with. He ended up testing negative a few days after, so it worked out for him. Remember how I said it's 40% luck? I can't say I'm not a bit envious of him.
On Friday, I started coughing up frothy blood in the shower. I called the ER, but they said I would just have to go in since they couldn't give advice over the phone. I knew our local hospital was close to capacity and I didn't think I could sit upright long enough to drive there anyway, so I downloaded some apps to figure out how to the our telehealth benefit I had. A couple hours later, a doctor on the phone said as long as I wasn't feeling short of breath, it was probably a small tear from coughing hard and wasn't a major concern. I sat and thought real hard about if I was actually short of breath or just anxious and decided to stay home.
"Have you lost your sense of smell yet?" The doctor asked.
"No, thankfully not yet."
"You're lucky."
I was not lucky. That doctor jinxed me, I swear!
That night, I had the weirdest dreams. I have not done hard drugs, but that night is what I imagine a bad trip would be like. If at any point I went hypoxic, that was the night. (I am disappointed my pulse oximeter was at work, because it would have been interesting to find out.) The best way I can describe it was that it felt like my brain was folding in on itself. At one point I considered I might have been stroking out and thought about calling for help, but I couldn't find my body to tell it to reach for my phone. It was bizarre. I don't know if it was Covid or not, but it was odd enough I figured it deserved a mention.
The next morning I couldn't smell my blankets. You probably don't think of blankets as having a smell. It's not something I noticed until I suddenly couldn't notice it. Rushing to the bathroom, I grabbed perfumes and essential oils. The small few I could smell seemed like the smell was very distant and far away.
That's when I cried. I had friends who had Covid who couldn't smell for weeks or months, and it was such a disheartening thought. I remember going to let my dog out and when I got outside taking off the mask I wore to protect my roommates, and feeling absolutely despondent that I couldn't smell the fresh air. This wasn't a clogged sinus and stuffy nose blocking my sense of smell; this was an entire sense missing. With my smell gone, all food tasted like cardboard.
Fortunately, despite my fears, it only lasted a couple days.
Monday, six days after my symptoms started, my sense of smell returned about 60%, as I noticed I could smell my body wash again. I was still coughing like no one's business, but my fever had been gone for a whole day and I finally felt just a little bit stronger. I sat up in a chair and lasted about five minutes before dizziness sent me back to bed. Then I tried six minutes of sitting. Slowly, I built up to two hours sitting in the chair, smelling all the essential oils I could and trying to will my strength and senses back.
Working in physical therapy in a skilled nursing facility, I tell my patients all the time to get out of bed and just sit in order to build up their endurance. After Covid, I have a whole new appreciation as to how challenging just sitting can be!
Over the rest of the week my cough persisted but the fatigue slowly lessened and the sense of smell slowly strengthened. Friday I was officially free, per CDC guidelines, and I went for a very short, flat hike that winded me. I was able to return to work the day after.
The cough lingered for a couple weeks, but lessened each day, and I managed with cough syrup and cough drops. (My doctor suggested Robitussin over Dayquil, as the former is an expectorant.) Oh, and remember that swab I got the Sunday before my symptoms started? Yeah, the county health department called me to let me know I was positive two weeks later, after my quarantine period had ended and I was already back at work. (Per CDC guidelines, you are clear 10 days after your symptoms began, assuming you are fever-free for at least 24 hours on the tenth day.) No wonder our healthcare capacity was so impacted with the labs running that far behind on notifying cases! I was so thankful I had access to the rapid testing through my work to verify my diagnosis instead of waiting on the county labs.
Today, when hiking or doing any exercise, I still get short of breath quicker than I should. According to my Fitbit, my resting HR increased while I was sick and then quickly went back to normal, but after a week of recovery gradually crept up into the upper 70's when it should be in the low 60's. Three months later, and it seems like this week it has started to decrease a little bit, but we'll have to wait and see if that trend continues to return it to normal. It makes me wonder what the underlying damage is.
Bonus: My Covid Vaccine Experience
A few weeks after I recovered and returned to work, we were offered the vaccine as frontline healthcare workers. I asked if I should get it since it was so soon after recovery; my director of nursing shrugged and said the CDC didn't say anything against it, so I figured I better stay with my "phase" and get it since it might be logistically more difficult later. We got the Pfizer shot.
I have never had an arm so sore after a shot. The ache lasted about five days, though the day after was the worst. The first shot I got in my non-dominant arm and the second shot in my dominant arm; I hoped that since I moved that arm.more the second shot might hurt less. They both hurt the same.
Both shots gave me a slightly elevated temp, and both made me exhausted the day after. I slept most of the day after (fortunately my normal day off) and felt back to normal by evening.
Despite having side effects from both shots, the vaccine reaction was not nearly as bad as the actual Covid. As much as people seem to be afraid of those reactions, getting the actual disease can be so much worse.
I stayed out of the hospital, but I was still pretty damn sick. I have had friends end up in the ICU with scarier symptoms than I had. I had friends who stayed out of the ICU but became "long haulers" who didn't really recover from fatigue and pain and shortness of breath, who have resorted to literally crawling around their homes because they lack the capacity to walk. One of those felt so debilitated and despondent that she took her own life over it.
The disease is so much scarier than the vaccine reactions. If I were you and had to choose between one of the two, I'd choose the vaccine in (an elevated) heartbeat.
