I Got COVID-19 As A Young Healthy Person And It Kicked My A– - Page 14

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Well, it happened. We got that sh-t.

My husband and I drove just shy of 1,000 miles to escape the city and be with family in a more remote area for three months during the pandemic. We fled our apartment in a busy metropolitan area in the middle of the night with only five days’ worth of clothes when we heard people were getting into fistfights over toilet paper at grocery stores in March of 2020. We holed up in a cabin, developing true cabin fever, for a full fiscal quarter, trying to avoid the virus. On our way home to the big city, instead of having a real wedding as we thought we might one day, we eloped in Las Vegas – having our wedding over Zoom, with nobody present besides us and the minister. These were just some of the ways we let the pandemic turn our world upside down, so as to avoid getting COVID-19.

Then we came back to the city, nevertheless, leading a super isolated lifestyle. We both work from home. Only the grocery store gets either of us under a roof with people who aren’t from our household, and even then, we wear our masks and sanitize our hands the second we get home and after putting groceries away. Back in August, we treated ourselves to one weekend in an Airbnb with another couple – before which we all quarantined for 14 days and got tested. We were sort of the picture of pandemic perfection. And then, after all of that, just as social media reports started cropping up about friends in my age group getting the vaccine, something didn’t quite feel right. And I got this damned virus. I had always taken it seriously, but now that I’ve had it, I know that that thing demands our respect and our attention. Here’s what COVID-19 was like for me.

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My experience with testing

If you’ve been told the only way to make sure you’re negative is to get a negative test and then quarantine for a while, that’s not paranoia. The tests are not 100 percent accurate and foolproof. Anything but. Case and point: my husband and I got tested together. He tested positive. I tested negative. And then, three days later, I got all of the COVID-19 symptoms. But I could have told anyone that was going to happen. I didn’t buy it for a second when the test said that. I lived with a COVID-19-positive individual, with whom I share a bed and meals and kisses, and I somehow didn’t have it? Yeah right. Neither of us were shocked when it turned out that my negative test was pretty worthless.

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The lag in symptoms was surprising

We were surprised that my husband developed symptoms a full five days before I did. The moment he started feeling a bit sick – the day before we got tested – we quarantined him to the second bedroom. He was only to leave that room for true emergencies, and if he did, he had to wear his mask. Otherwise, I dropped off all necessities at his door, texting him, “Your food is outside” only once I’d cleared the area. And I was flooding my system with immunity boosters the moment my husband so much as reported a slight sore throat. I am not a doctor, and not even a doctor could ever confirm why there was such a delay between the onset of my husband’s symptoms and mine, but maybe all our precautions did work for a little bit. Until they didn’t.

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It started as the worst headache ever

My first symptom was a headache that would not let up. It wasn’t a little pounding in one area or a cluster headache. It sort of felt like my entire head – every inch of it – was being knocked around and melting at the same time. It started at bedtime one night and lasted the full night. Every four hours I would get up to take my allotted Tylenol and that would do absolutely nothing. I do not recall any letup in this headache. I may as well have been taking Placebo pills. I’ve learned from other friends who had it that the usual headache remedies seem to stand no chance against the coronavirus headache.

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Then I couldn’t catch my breath

The morning after the headache-riddled, sleepless night, I got up to feed my dog and take her out as usual. I did exactly this before completely feeling like the wind was knocked out of me. I stood up and crossed the apartment. That’s it. At first, I thought I’d just gotten up too fast, so I sat down while mixing up my dog’s food. However, my breath would not return to me fully. It became pretty apparent that I was about to faint, so I started walking back to the bedroom and totally blacked out – like I couldn’t see anything for a moment – before feeling around for the bed with my hands and lying down. I was pretty afraid to get up again for a while. It was obvious that something in my body was begging me not to.

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Every tiny task felt like climbing a mountain

When people tell you they experience body fatigue with COVID-19, it might be hard to grasp what that really feels like until you get it. Every choice to get up from bed was that – a hard choice. I knew I risked feeling too low on oxygen and falling over every time I so much as got up to make a snack or use the toilet. I would sit in bed, scared, contemplating if it was really worth brushing my teeth that day, knowing how much it would totally knock me out. Yes, I had my husband help me with some things. But he was also sick, and there are some things others can’t do for you – like use the toilet. I dreaded it because I had to sit up for several minutes at a time, which was very hard to do.

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Day three was scary

I know this sounds dramatic, but on day three of my symptoms, I felt so terrible that I kept saying to my husband, “I don’t know how I’m alive. I don’t know how the human body can feel like this and still be alive.” Every ounce of energy had left my body. It had gotten to the point where brushing my teeth twice a day and showering was out of the question. At that point, simply turning over in bed would take every ounce of energy I had. No exaggeration: rolling over to sleep on my right side instead of my left would leave me panting. I really felt that if I were one ounce sicker, or lost one more ounce of energy, I wasn’t going to make it. I didn’t understand how my body could go on like that.

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My sense of smell went completely away

The day right before symptoms set in, I picked a piece of rosemary from outside and sniffed it – it was robust and aromatic. It smelled amazing. The day I nearly fainted feeding my dog, when I finally had the strength, I went back to the same patch of rosemary. Picked a piece. Smelled it. Nothing. Nothing. I nearly shoved that thing in my nostrils and still, the smell was absolutely nothing. I started trying to smell more and more pungent and aromatic things like my dog’s food, coffee, or laundry detergent. Nothing, nothing, nothing. When your sense of smell leaves with COVID-19, it’s not that kind of “Aw, I’m a little congested and smell is diminished” you get with a cold or the flu. It’s like your olfactory system has completely closed for business.

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Then my taste went

The day after my smell went, my taste went. You don’t realize how much this will affect you, but it turns out that being able to taste your food plays a big role in feeling satiated after a meal. You just don’t feel motivated to eat if you can’t taste your food. I would make plates of food, just sort of eyeballing it and thinking, “I guess this is the amount I should have?” and then force myself to eat it. But cutting and chewing and swallowing a whole meal when you don’t taste a single thing is really frustrating. I dropped about eight pounds throughout this process. That weight loss happened within one week. I’m not someone who could afford to lose weight to begin with so, I started to look scary.

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Then the stomach issues began

You may have heard that some people experience gastrointestinal issues with COVID-19, and that was definitely the case for me. On day four of symptoms, I spent the entire day certain I was either going to throw up or have diarrhea at any given moment. I don’t have any eloquent way of putting it: my insides were just freaking out. It definitely felt like my intestines had taken it upon themselves to try to expel this virus from my body. By the way, I was still feeling like I’d collapse if I got out of bed so having to run to the bathroom every half hour was no treat.

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A taste came back, but not a good one

I’d heard reports that some people get this metallic taste in their mouth, and a weird stinging/strong smell in their nostrils when they have the virus. By day five, none of that had happened to me so I thought I was out of the woods, but that’s just when it hit me. For the record, when this taste takes over your mouth and nose, you will miss the days when you couldn’t taste anything. You will long for the time when you couldn’t smell anything. You’ll drool over the idea of a favorite food – pizza, steak dinner, nachos, whatever – and you’ll make it or order it. And then, that tinge will hit your nose. That…rusty penny smell. And you know it’s over. You take that first bite of food, and it all just tastes like metal. Some describe it as Windex. It’s a bit different for everyone, but one thing is for sure: it’s not appetizing.

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How it felt different from the flu

The metal flavor in my mouth was actually the first symptom that creeped me out because it was the first symptom that I’d never experienced before. You don’t get metal mouth with the flu or a cold. That taste really made me understand there was an intruder in my body. We hear of COVID-19 originating in an animal (reportedly a bat), and I think for many – certainly for me – that’s what really makes you feel yucky when you get it. It seems like this virus isn’t even meant for humans. But a lot of this did just feel like the worst flu I ever had, until the metal taste. That was unprecedented for me.

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It hits so fast

Another difference between this and the flu, for me, was how fast it comes on. With the flu, you can have a few days when you know you’re getting sick. You know the experience: a little scratchy throat, a little fatigue. The flu announces itself a few days early, so you have time to prepare. With COVID-19, I was fine one day, and bedridden the next. I went on a long walk with my dog the day before and ran tons of errands. I had no hint whatsoever that something had invaded my body. I was shocked by how quickly I went from feeling fine to being fully ill.

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Some parts last for weeks

Even though my digestive issues are over, I’m breathing okay, I no longer have body aches, and I can finally walk my dog again without feeling like I might need an ambulance, I still have severe body fatigue and the metal mouth. My friends who’ve had this said that this can last for up to a month. I do not yet wake up ready to take on the day. I more feel like, “Oh no. I have to survive another day.” I have zero get-up-and-go energy. I need to nap – sometimes twice a day – to make it through my tasks. And half the food I eat still smells and tastes like metal. For some reason, only sweet stuff tastes okay to me, and even then, the flavor is still diminished.

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I’m one of the lucky ones

This has all been the account of COVID-19 from a healthy 31-year-old woman with no preexisting conditions and no excess weight, putting me in none of the at-risk categories. I don’t smoke. I eat very healthy. I rarely drink. I take immunity boosters year-round like it’s my job. And Covid-19 still felt like this for me. It’s given me a new level of, I want to say “compassion” for people in at-risk groups, but that doesn’t cover it. It’s fear. I have a new level of fear for them. Hell, I even have a new level of fear for myself because we don’t yet know that we can eliminate COVID-19 from the world, and I’m only going to keep getting older, and less healthy, so one day, I could be in an at-risk group, while the virus could still be at large.