I was considered a lucky person because I only had a mild case of COVID. I didn’t even register a fever until I went to Urgent Care for my test. I had a two-week-old digital thermometer at home that was still only registering 99.6, but they had me at 100.4 two hours later. My fever went back down that night and didn’t return until two days later. That weekend, it would come and go. The last one I had was for a little while on Sunday.
I had zero coughs and no impaired breathing. I was breathing just as normally as ever, aside from the usual sinusy feeling I get when the temperature fluctuates 20 degrees. I am also allergic to my dear, sweet feline, who loves to sleep with me. So I get sniffly with her. But if I remember to take Benadryl before I go to bed, I am not as bad. So I had no concerns there.
I would get a little achy, but nothing to write home about. Again, it was most likely to happen if I had too much bread or something with yeast. (I have a yeast intolerance, not a gluten intolerance. There is a difference.) I also get achy when it is cold outside or if my body is having a hormonal fit. Nothing happened like that first weekend, though.
My sense of smell came back after only about two days. I’ll be perfectly honest. I have never been so excited to smell my own shit before. I realized that I could smell it and started doing a happy dance in the bathroom, smelling all of the soaps and the cleaners. It took another few days before it had fully returned, but it came back quickly.
My biggest issue was the fatigue. I was constantly tired. So much sleeping. I hadn’t had coffee since the Thursday before I got sick. So I didn’t have caffeine keeping me going. Because I was sick, I was home and not doing much. I was still trying to do some work, because bills still exist. I wasn’t going to the stores because of quarantine. People kept bringing me prepared food and groceries. So I was eating well. Just still so tired.
I was so tired I couldn’t read a book. If you know me at all, that’s completely abnormal. I am always reading. It was hard to scroll through Facebook. I got bored watching movies and TV shows, but also would doze off. Brain fog had also kind of set in. I would forget simple things or get confused. That isn’t normal for me, but I also knew that was a potential side effect. I spent a lot of time resting to let my body heal and to clear my head. I tried to move my legs around in bed and to get up periodically to move around.
But just so tired.
A friend of mine from high school who is a nurse was concerned about my pulse ox readings because of the fatigue. So another friend of ours from high school sent me a monitor. My oxygen levels were well within the normal range, so that wasn’t the issue. I truly believed I just needed to let the virus run its course.
I was released from quarantine a week after I tested positive. The rules at that point were you could be released after 10 days of the onset of symptoms as long as you had no fever. It had been 10 days at that point and I hadn’t had a fever in at least three days. I did stay home from work the rest of that week, though, out of an abundance of caution.
I also had to do my annual job performance review from home via Zoom in the middle of all of this. I got rave reviews, even though I know I was rambling like a bit of an idiot. But they knew I was sick and I have been busting my butt all year thus far.
I ended up dogsitting that weekend. I had cleared it with the health department. I was out of quarantine and was no longer contagious, though I would likely test positive for another three months. Driving was scary. I went just as evening was setting in and it was rainy. I felt completely unsure of myself behind the wheel and felt like I had no idea where the road lines were. I mean, that often happens because you can’t see road lines, but you still know where you are. And then when I got to the house, I couldn’t remember the code to get in. I have been going to my friend’s house for six years and had spent the better part of the summer dogsitting. There was no reason for me to have forgotten it. Oh yeah, COVID brain fog.
When my friend got home on Sunday, she said I looked pale. She was concerned about me driving at night, so I stayed over one more night. Plus my leg was really sore. I had injured my left knee earlier in the fall and was still recovering. She has really hard floors, so I felt like I had pulled the muscle from walking funny and was just achy from that. It had happened before. It was really hard to walk, though.
I decided to try to go into work on Monday, just to get caught up on things. My leg didn’t hurt as much as the day before, so I just kept trying to stretch. Stretching wasn’t doing much in the calf. I noticed pinching happening on the side of the calf muscle. All of the articles mentioning blood clots popped into my head. I called the nurse’s hotline for advice.
What happened next is the story for next week.
Catch up on previous posts: