My mom is fond of calling Covid "the gift that keeps on taking" because what WON'T it take from us in the end? We all kind of figured we'd catch it eventually, as it seemed naive to hope that none of us would have it, but it had been 11 months since the shutdowns last March, and no one in my family or Nick's family had caught it. I went up to visit my family at the end of February "just for a week" and wouldn't you know- I finally caught it. This is my little journal of my own experience with Covid, a disease that is seemingly different for everyone and works in mysterious ways.
The first two days after I was exposed I had no symptoms and felt perfectly fine. I was around everyone else in the house without any sort of precautions, and I didn't know I had been exposed to the virus.
(Feb 16) Day 1 of symptoms: Started feeling like a cold was coming on. I especially felt it in my sinuses. My kids had just gotten over a cold, so I figured I had simply caught whatever they had.
(Feb 17) Day 2 of symptoms: Woke up feeling worse. The 'cold' had gone to my voice and I could feel a tickle in my throat. I felt congested and my sinuses still felt bad. This was the day Ellie and I found out that we had been exposed to Covid four days earlier. We also learned that John had gotten a positive test. I ended up feeling so tired that afternoon that I took a nap on the couch, and Ellie and I decided we probably had better not go to church that evening. I did not have a fever, I was barely coughing, and I could still taste and smell things.
(March 18) Day 3 of symptoms: I felt better after waking up the next morning. My plan had been to drive home the next day, and I told myself as long as I kept feeling better the rest of the day, I would be fine to drive home. My voice still sounded bad, but I was much more awake and had more energy. I was barely coughing, and had no other Covid symptoms apart from mild cold symptoms, so I really didn't think I had it. Went to bed thinking I would drive home the next day.
(Feb 19) Day 4: I woke up the next day feeling fatigued, congested, and not up to doing much. I didn't want to commit to a seven and a half hour drive alone with the two girls when I was already tired and had next to no voice. Since I still had a tickle in my throat, and since I had been exposed to Covid, we decided I had better go in and get a rapid test so that the rest of the family, and especially Dad, would know if they needed to quarantine. I drove the half hour over to Mankato, did a drive through rapid test at Hy-Vee (it was the full nose swab test and I was dreading it, but it was actually way better than I expected. It felt like getting water up your nose while swimming, and it was over quickly.) They were cranking out the test results quickly that day, and by the time I drove the 30 miles back to the parsonage I had my test results: positive. Let the quarantine begin!
The rest of my family signed up for their own tests immediately that afternoon, choosing not to get the rapid ones since they're so expensive. Ellie and Abby, who were no longer at home but had been around me earlier, also went and got tests. At this point we figured most, if not all of us, had Covid and were in for the 10 days of quarantine. I felt tired, congested, and like I had a cold, but I didn't feel as bad as I would have expected from Covid. And I still had my taste and smell... at least I thought. That evening I ate my last supper that I could taste. That evening I was putting on my nightly concoction of Vick's vapor rub and got into bed before realizing "wait... I didn't smell that at all!" Looks like I wasn't going to luck out of that symptom after all.
(Feb 20) Day 5: Woke up tired and fatigued, with absolutely no sense of smell and unable to taste breakfast. I spent most of the day in the basement, reading or editing photos, or watching the kids. Still, on the whole, I felt decent enough. Better than I would have expected with having Covid. Grandpa quarantined in his rooms and ate in there by himself, but the rest of the family continued hanging out with me and the girls, especially since we figured that they all probably had Covid as well. This was a huge help to me, as I would not have been able to keep the girls occupied and happy by myself. Uncle Sam took them outside to play, Grandma and Grandpa got up early with them and fed them their (many) breakfasts, and they played legos with them, read books with them, sat with them at nap time and bedtime to get them to fall asleep. Basically they are the real MVPs of this situation. In the evening we watched the movie Greyhound, which was quite good. I was pretty congested, which made breathing (especially at night) more difficult. I also started noticing a little bit of tightness in my chest in the evening, occasionally and mostly when I was exhaling. The best thing was taking a nice hot shower, which made all the symptoms much better (at least until I had to get out).
(Feb 21) Day 6: The worst day, part i. Because of our quarantines, we didn't have church and instead did a short morning prayer service at home. The rest of the family all got their test results back: all negative! My cough was worse, although still mostly occasional. I never did have an unrelenting cough. I felt very tired and didn't feel much like getting off the couch. I couldn't really focus on reading or editing photos, and Sam and I tried to watch Lord of the Rings together but I couldn't even focus on that. The tightness in my chest was a little more prominent that evening. It was really hard to tell whether it was just mental, and I was psyching myself out, or if it was something concerning. It wasn't painful, but it felt like a slight heaviness resting on my upper chest occasionally. Mom and dad have a pulse oximeter that they bought a while back on the chance that the family would get Covid. So I was able to monitor my oxygen levels to give me peace of mind about the tightness of the chest- it was always at least 97. I ended up taking a bath to relax, and that helped. I slept pretty well by the time I went to bed, thankfully. My appetite also went down this day. Turns out it isn't much fun to eat when you can't taste anything.
(Feb 22) Day 7: The worst day, part ii. This day I had very little appetite. Chewing and swallowing food was awful, almost making me feel a little nauseous. I could taste some things: saltiness, sweetness, sourness, but none of the flavors that came along with that. The best food to eat was salty or sour, especially roast chicken, mashed potatoes, oranges, and potato and ham soup. But on this day I could barely even make myself eat anything. Kefir was my saving grace, as I could just drink it without chewing, and that didn't bother me nearly as much. As the day went on I felt worse, and it messed with my brain, making me wonder "am I getting worse and not better?" I didn't know till later that this is fairly common with Covid, but at the time it was mentally a lot. You hear of bad covid cases (hello- it's a pandemic), and "tightness in the chest" is one of the warning symptoms, but a call to the doctor said not to worry unless things got worse. Easy to say, hard to do. We watched World's Most Extraordinary Homes in the evening, and that worked pretty well as a distraction.
(Feb 23) Day 8: This day was a little better than before. My appetite started coming back a little bit. Symptoms still got worse as the day went on, and I was pretty tired by the evening. We started watching the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice as a distraction on this evening, and I continued with my hot shower remedy.
(Feb 24) Day 9: Continued feeling better. I was able to get up and walk around more, and got some of my focus back for reading and editing photos. My cough was a little improved, my appetite was improved, and my congestion was going down. Yay!
(Feb 25) Day 10: Another day feeling better. I may actually be able to drive home tomorrow! Got things packed up, which made me much more tired than it should have, and also tended to start up the coughing. We finished up Pride and Prejudice, and I finished up the book Piranesi.
(Feb 26) Day 11: Quarantine over! I was finally able to go home and see Nick again. It was great to be home, but despite how it upset our plans, I think it was a blessing in many ways for me to have Covid at my parents' instead of at home. With Nick being swamped with busy season hours and work, he couldn't afford to get really sick right now, and I could not have managed to take care of the girls by myself. I am thankful that nobody else caught the virus from me, and that now I have the antibodies and won't have to worry about catching it before Ellie's wedding.
I finally got my sense of taste back on Friday (March 5), and my smell has been coming gradually back as well. Let's just say, the first time I smelled Pippa's poopy diaper again I was happier to smell poop than I ever have been in my life! I still occasionally have the cough, and my energy levels are still a little low, but I'm on the whole recovered now. The tightness in the chest is gone, and so is the congestion. It's very strange to us how randomly this virus seems to spread. Ellie, John and I were all together and got exposed together on one day, and only John and I managed to catch it. Then I was around my family for 6 days, not socially distancing from each other at all, and not a single one of them caught it, despite me being in much closer and longer proximity with them than I was with the person I caught it from. Very strange. My symptoms also, while not utterly unique, were not the same as John's, and were not quite the same as many other people we know who have had it. I also never had the telltale fever.
I took a wide variety of things daily to help my immune system fight this off. For anyone interested, those were: Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Garlic, Zing lozenges, homemade cough syrup (made with honey, lemon juice, thyme, ginger, etc), Ricola cough drops, Vicks vapor rub (on chest and feet and under nose), oil of oregano, oscillococcum, and breathe right strips at night. Good old English Breakfast Tea was also a lifesaver, as it is relaxing and it helped soothe the tickle in my throat. I'm not here to say that these are cures or anything, but they hardly hurt.
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