Did you lose your sense of taste?
That's usually one of the first responses from people upon hearing I had COVID.
No. No I didn’t. Jim did for about a week or ten days.
But the list of symptoms is long and varied, and in an attempt to commit to memory just how bizarre some of them were, I shall blog an entry for my own personal record keeping.
It started with a dry tickle cough and eighteen hours later I could feel a fever coming on and my eyes felt like they were getting glassy. And within a day my eyeballs hurt. Not really a headache, just sore eyeballs.
My appetite disappeared and rather than the expected loss of taste, my mouth felt like it was full of bitter chalk. Yeah, I was brushing and flossing regularly.
Jim developed what he calls “the touchy feelies,” a full-bodied skin sensation likened to the beginning of a shingles episode. I’ve never had shingles, but I only developed this odd sensation on the top of my head. It felt like I’d stood up and smashed my head on a cupboard or something – like my scalp was bruised.
Another odd sensation happened in my right foot. When I walked and put pressure on the ball of my right foot I would get a bizarre electrical shock through my foot. Jim had a similar thing but his was sudden unexplained pain shooting through his ankle, sometimes while just lying in bed.
I slept a lot.
I was tired, but more than tired I was weak. My arms felt like they weighed 150 pounds each. I say I slept a lot, and I did, but it was in short bursts, always broken up by coughing fits. I’d get restless and have to move from bed to couch and back again regularly. Cursing my two story house with each ascension and descension of the stairs.
The constant coughing left me feeling like I’d been punched in the solar plexus, making me feel consistently nauseous. Although I never did actually throw up.
During the second week diarrhea set in. Trust me when I say, do not, I repeat, do not, fart in bed if you have COVID. It takes far less energy to run to the toilet for a false alarm than to deal with the aftermath of not making it, if you know what I mean.
Also bladder control was a bit of an issue. I didn’t necessarily feel a terrible urge to pee, but regularly had pee running down my leg by the time I reached the bathroom. Thank you God for tile floors.
After two weeks the dry cough became phlegmy, which was a rusty red colour. I’d never experienced anything quite like it. It was kind of a pretty fall colour that went with the changing of the leaves that I’d lay and watch out the window as they changed colours.
It took nearly two days in my weakened state for it to dawn on me that the pretty red colour was actually because I was coughing up blood. Probably not a good sign.
The COVID numbers in the north skyrocketed while we were CV-positive, to the point they were shipping people to other cities to be treated because they just couldn’t keep up with treatment here in PG. Had this not been the case, I probably would have made a trip to the ER to have the blood investigated. But I procrastinated long enough that it corrected itself and after a few days the phlegm became clear again. For this I am so very grateful. I know of many others who took a terrible turn for the worse at this point.
The phlegm colour cleared, but the coughing was still horrible.
It was exhausting and not great for trying to get some sleep and heal. I felt like I was trying to push all my guts through my pelvic floor and out of my vagina.
I remembered as a child we had a chicken who laid an egg so big all her intestines were hanging out her butt behind her. I’m sure we ate her for dinner that night.
I wondered if it was humanly possible to push all my intestines out without having to lay an egg.
I sleep with a CPAP machine, and I am sure it was helpful to keep my airways open and my blood oxygen levels acceptable even though I was only breathing super shallow, as inhaling much air always set off a coughing fit.
Another weird observation I made was that my fingernails didn’t grow over a three week period. I had painted my nails the first day I was starting to get sick and at the end of three weeks I had zero polish grow-out. Normally I have annoying gaps at the cuticle within about 4 days. Not really something to whine about when there are others being ventilated, intubated and even dying. But it was an observation.
And my hair felt really dry. Kind of straw like. I normally have quite healthy hair and it hasn’t been coloured in a year and a half. It definitely needs cut. I have an appointment tomorrow.
Anyway, here I am entering my fourth week fighting off this beast. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to someone, “It’s been horrible, but I think I’ve turned a corner.” I think I have turned so many corners that I’m starting to get dizzy.
But I am much better. Still have occasional coughing fits. My lungs feel ‘heavy’. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m not really short of breath and I don’t really know how long I have to be on guard against pneumonia, but my lungs still aren’t right.
I had three nights in a row where I slept pretty much all night, then last night I hardly slept at all again, even though I didn’t nap during the day. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, you seem to be doing fine and then you get a day that whacks you again.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at going into my fourth week. Trying to remain grateful for my life through it all. And I am. I know things could be much much worse.
Jim has been so good through it all. I just love having him at my side. Making toast. Ensuring I was drinking enough. (The fluid nazi, I lovingly refer to him as.) Winterizing everything at the lake. Watering flowers and doing all the things.
And right in the midst of it all I sold my house. I’m so very grateful. But I was panicking at how I was going to get all the paperwork done with the lawyer. But Carolynne Burkholder-James and modern technology worked it all out.
Had I not been quarantined inside and pretty much unable to stand upright for more than three minutes at a time, I would have cleaned a little harder for the new people and perhaps baked them a batch of cinnamon buns or something. I trust they will be as blessed in their new home as I was for over sixteen years. But I am so happy to get renovations over with and just get on with our lives. JimE and I can start our real New Beginning. Somehow I didn’t expect to start it with four weeks in bed.
But I am happy with the 14 pound weight loss. I guess a diet of bone broth, Neo Citran and Amy’s organic soup, supplemented by a few bowls of homemade goodness from people that love us, is a fairly successful weight loss program.
And laying around for three and a half weeks with my phone in my hand means that it’s the first week of October and 80% of my Christmas shopping is done. Yay Amazon and Costco.ca.
A couple of dangerous discoveries have been experiencing SaveOn home delivery alongside the joy of having a housekeeper come in.
Yes, I suspect COVID has changed life as we know it.
