My Covid Experience

My Covid experience mirrored the colds I get once or twice a winter, for the most part at least. The exhaustion preceded the cough, and the cough made sleep more difficult, which doubtlessly prolongs the duration of the illness.

Glory tested positive on Wednesday the 20th, her second day of a stuffy nose and sneezes. Audrey and I both tested negative the following day and went (masked!) to the movies for her birthday and saw The Lost City with Channing Tatum and Sandra Bullock (I can't call it a great movie, but we had a wonderful time and quite a few laughs). Audrey woke up the next day with the sniffles and tested positive, but I didn't. 

I harboured no delusions - I was going to catch this plague, I had no doubt. It felt inevitable, but I was working from home anyways and didn't feel too awful; just a little tired on Friday afternoon after work. My intention was to guts through it as much as I could. 

But I tested on Tuesday morning (Apr 26) to satiate Audrey's curiosity, and not only did I test positive, but that second stripe pigmented up almost immediately and to a very dark shade of purple. Well, never was one to do things by half-measures, I suppose.

Did the test affect my outlook or energy levels? I don't think so, but who can say for certain? By the next day, I had coughed throughout the night and was extremely tired, so I took the day off work [and the following day as well] to rest. Unable to sleep during the day, at least I was not using my voice or aggravating my cough. Unable to focus enough to read or do any painting, I scrolled endlessly on my phone or iPad or re-played Call of Duty in a haze. 

Thursday I returned to work but asked to stay off the phones due to my nasty cough, spending the morning in a meeting and online training sessions. I responded to correspondence in the afternoon, a process that involves enough steps to make me ill at ease doing it in most situations, and my bleariness definitely impacted my outlook - a case study in remote presenteeisim.

When I woke up on the downstairs futon Friday morning, I felt like I hadn't slept at all, despite having gained at least 6-7 hours of slumber (drug-induced to overcome the wheezing and coughing). I called work to say I would not be in, fell back to sleep (a rarity in itself!) and didn't wake up until just before noon.

Canéla decided to join me shortly thereafter, and I think I drifted off again, so I didn't actually make it upstairs until after 1:00.  Of course, one of the nice things about being ill is that you can indulge yourself in all manner of comfort foods with very little of the usual guilt, so I made myself a plate of chips in the air fryer. I garnished them with smoked salt and served them up with a ramekin of leftover gravy, a feast that 17-year-old me would have been proud of. 

Sadly, the coughing didn't really start to abate until the next day, but by Saturday night it had become much more infrequent. In fact, by bedtime, I felt ambitious enough to start thawing a tenderloin for the next night's dinner, mere hours after having abdicated that evening's cooking duties to Smilie's restaurant and their large servings of hot and sour soup accompanied by delicious egg rolls.

Which brings us to today. I went to sleep last night aided only by melatonin and woke up earlier than I would have liked, and was unable to fall back to sleep, despite my best efforts. Having said that though, I did sleep through the night (another rarity, even pre-Covid!), and spent the rest of the day merely tired and not exhausted and zombie-like as I had been for much of the previous week. The barest tickle is there to remind me of the cough that has plagued my days for almost a week.

So! Not all the way out of the woods yet, but to all appearances I seem to be on the mend. Audrey returned to work today and Fenya (who finally tested positive yesterday) feels better today than she has for the past couple of days. No loss of taste or smell and no signs of long Covid for any of us, thank heavens. 

I am very grateful for the vaccines and boosters our household has received, as I am sure they made our experience far less severe than it might have been without them. Frankly, it was bad enough as it was!