My Experience with Covid-19

Welp. It happened. Two years and three months since Covid-19 was declared a pandemic, I finally tested positive for the virus. It was bound to happen! I’ve tested myself for Covid before and every time, I’ve had so much anxiety about the results. When I tested myself this time around, I had no anxiety because I was 99% sure it was Covid and I was resigned to my fate.

How I Got Covid

I don’t know exactly where and when I picked up Covid, but I am pretty sure it was on the plane. We flew home from Buffalo on Tuesday. On all of my flights (to Buffalo and back to Tampa), the mask wearing was pretty minimal. Maybe 10% of people were wearing them? It’s not surprising in Florida because things have been pretty lax around here since, like, May of 2020. I thought I’d see more people wearing masks in the Buffalo airport, but it was about the same amount.

And I hesitate to say this because I worry about the vitriol I may receive, but I’m going to be honest and say neither my mom nor I wore masks. Was it the wrong choice? One of us got Covid, one of us didn’t, so who really knows? I do know I will be masking on planes from here on out because it is just not worth the risk. I feel stupid about not wearing a mask, but at least, if I did get Covid from this stupid decision, I didn’t affect anyone else. I remained pretty isolated from the time I came home on Tuesday until my symptoms appeared, so I feel confident that at the very least I didn’t have to call up a bunch of people and tell them to test and isolate.

The Timeline

I started feeling a little crummy on Thursday afternoon, about 48 hours after my flight home. It basically felt like I had swollen lymph nodes near my throat and I started worrying about Covid. I had a massage scheduled for 10 a.m. on Friday, so I needed to know if it was Covid or not before then, so since I was feeling a bit crummy, I took a test and it was glaringly positive.

I woke up on Friday with a scratchy throat, a headache, and a runny nose. I took another Covid test just to be sure, but it was also very clearly positive, so that’s when I canceled my massage (and was glad they didn’t charge me a cancellation fee; that would not have been a good look for them) as well as the facial I had scheduled for Monday. On Friday, I started to feel myself get progressively sicker as the day went on. I was able to take a nap in the morning, but only for maybe an hour or two. I always struggle with my sleep when I’m sick and no matter how fatigued I was with Covid, it was still so hard for me to sleep. I spent the majority of the day on my couch, mostly watching TV. I think I watched, like, 10 hours of TV on this day.

I barely slept on Friday night. I woke up around 2:30 with chills and took my temp, which is when I realized I had a fever. Nothing major—just slightly over 100°—and a dose of Tylenol took care of that. But I couldn’t fall back asleep so I just watched TV on the couch until I finally felt tired enough to try to get some sleep. I only slept for maybe an hour, though, and was up for the rest of the day. Saturday was tough, for sure. The headache was gone and I had a little more energy than Friday, but the congestion was worse, the scratchy throat was still around, and I was developing the dreaded dry cough.

I ended up dosing myself with Benadryl on Saturday night and whoaaa, I do not think I will ever be taking Benadryl again. I have always reacted poorly to it, but I also know that it can really knock me out and I needed to be able to sleep. And while I did end up sleeping 13 hours that night, it wasn’t a very restful 13 hours. For one, my fever came back, so my body just felt hot and clammy the whole night. I also just felt like all of my senses were super heightened. There was a constant buzzing in my ears, my skin felt super sensitive, and I felt like I was in an entirely different world all night long. It almost felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. It was not great!

Once the Benadryl finally wore off on Sunday, I started feeling more like myself. My sore throat had finally gone away and my fever was gone. Mostly, I was dealing with a dry cough and congestion. My back and sides were so sore from all the coughing! I tried taking a nap on Sunday but I just couldn’t get comfortable, so I gave up on it. But Sunday was the first time in three days that I was able to open my laptop and read blogs, so that’s a positive! I didn’t even attempt it the other days because I was just feeling so miserable.

Thankfully, Sunday night I had a pretty normal night of sleep. I took melatonin to help me fall asleep and aside from a few times I woke up coughing, I slept really well. It felt so good to have a nearly normal night of sleep after so many bad nights in a row. I felt pretty good on Monday, aside from my congestion and dry cough. I still took it very easy: lots of time spent watching TV on the couch, a midday nap, a nice warm bath at the end of the day. It just felt good, though, to be feeling more like myself!

How is Mom Doing?

Mom continues to test negative for Covid and hasn’t developed any symptoms! That’s a relief for me. Maybe I got it because I was in the middle seat on the plane and she was in the window seat? Or maybe my immune system was just ready for the attack. A few days before our trip, I developed a sore throat and dry cough and was so worried I had Covid, but I tested myself and was negative. My symptoms had gone away by our travel day, but my immune system just might have been weak enough at that point to fall victim to Covid. It’s hard to know.

How I Coped

There were a few things that got me through those first few rough days with Covid. I spent most of my time on the couch, watching TV and coloring. I got through the entire second season of Cheer (a docu-series about two competitive cheerleading teams in Texas) and most of an older season of MasterChef (season 8). Sometimes I didn’t have the energy to do anything more than lay down and watch TV, but other times, I liked lounging with my coloring book and coloring. I also released any time limits I had placed on my apps like Instagram and Happy Color. Now is not the time to be worried about how much time I was spending on my phone!

Other things that helped me:

• Popsicles – When my throat was sore or felt raw from coughing, an ice-cold popsicle really did the trick. I forgot how good popsicles are! There was one time when I woke up around 1:30am and couldn’t stop coughing. My throat was feeling so scratchy so I got a popsicle and ate it in my dark bedroom while playing Wordle.
• Gatorade – I drank so much Gatorade! It’s my go-to when I’m feeling sick because water usually tastes metallic and weird. I get a low-sugar version of Gatorade, and I had bottles everywhere in my apartment. Next to my bed, on my coffee table, on the counters… I needed to be close to Gatorade at all times because it helped me get through bad coughing fits.
• Ubereats convenience ordering – This was my first time using Ubereats to order stuff from Walgreens! My thermometer stopped working on Friday so I needed a new one, and I decided to try out Ubereats for a quick order. I also got Sprite, chicken noodle soup, Benadryl, and sore throat lozenges.
• Chicken noodle soup – Speaking of chicken noodle soup, this is usually my favorite sick food to eat. I never lost my appetite during Covid, but I didn’t eat as much as usual. For example, I could usually eat one can of soup and then something small for dinner… but I tried doing that on Tuesday and I was starving within an hour of eating the soup! Campbell’s Chunky chicken noodle soup is my go-to, and it was a lifesaver. I always try to have at least 3-4 cans in my cabinet at all time because you never know when you’re going to need it!
• My mom – You’re never too old to need your mom, and I definitely leaned on her a lot. She brought me some much-needed medicine and comfort food from Target on Saturday, called me constantly to check on me, and was that extra helping hand for me. It’s weird to get sick with Covid because you can’t necessarily have people waiting on you; my mom would have been over here in a heartbeat to take care of me in person, but we didn’t want her getting sick, too, so she had to take care of me from afar.

How I’m Doing Today

It’s now been seven days since my symptoms first appeared and I’m feeling about 95% back to normal. I still have a dry cough but it only affects me a few times a day. I’m still slightly congested but I can breathe through my nose again. My energy levels aren’t back to normal and I’m finding myself so worn out by the end of the workday. (I’m taking it easy, don’t you worry!) I think the more worrisome symptom that just popped up in the past couple of days is dizziness and a touch of vertigo. It’s not too bad, but I just seem to struggle with sudden movements and need a few moments to regain my equilibrium. We’ll see how long that lingers, but hopefully not too long!

I re-tested myself on Monday night and I was still positive. So I’m going to test again tomorrow and see what happens. I don’t really know how long someone can test positive; from the many Google searching I’ve done, I heard it can sometimes be months! So, I’m trying not to use that as a barometer of whether I can be in public again (since you can test positive but not be contagious). I’m choosing to trust the CDC when it says I am okay to be in public (masked, of course!) if it’s been five days since my symptoms appeared and my symptoms are improving. (Yes and yes.)

Today will be the first day I actually get out of my apartment, breathe some fresh air, drive my car, and be out in public since last Wednesday and I am so damn excited for that! It’s been a long, sometimes quite miserable, week and I’m just glad I’m on the other side of it.