I’m late to the party yet again; it took me several years to finally get COVID-19. Even with everything that’s been written on the subject, there were quite a few surprises that, upon asking around, I found were actually quite typical. I thought I’d go through what I experienced in case this is useful for anyone else.
Before I started showing physical symptoms, I became unusually emotional. I know, I know, I’m a pretty emotional guy, but this was off the charts. This continued throughout the entire time I was testing positive. Heck, I might still be feeling it; it’s tough to self-calibrate how “emotional” someone is. Let me give you an example:
Nicole sent this to me while I was quarantined in the back of the house, unable to see my wife or my new kitten*. Friends, I absolutely lost it. A song from a movie I’ve never seen just destroyed me. Sharing my experiences with some of my friends, I’ve learned that this is apparently a pretty normal reaction to COVID. Most of the people I’ve spoken with said they experienced heightened emotional reactions, but none of us knew that this was something we should expect.
*Cats can get COVID. You do not want to give your cat COVID.
The next weird thing was being tired all the time (OK, not that weird), but also being unable to sleep at all. There were a lot of factors that probably contributed to this: My perception of temperature went being “burning up” and “freezing” with nothing between, my eyes were very light-sensitive, and there were headaches that simply did not respond to any painkillers at all. The result was I spent hours just staring at the ceiling just wishing I could switch off and be one week into the future.
All of this added up to some seriously weird and interesting dreams, some of which were pretty disturbing. All of this is a long way of saying that I don’t think the psychological impact of COVID gets talked about nearly enough. It was deeply weird for me, and I understand I’m not alone in this. If you get the plague, expect things to get strange.
Now, my experience may be tempered somewhat by starting on Paxlovid 36 hours after the symptoms started. I have no clue if it helped or not; the disease ran a course of 4-5 days (time got kind of squishy). I don’t know if that’s normal, I don’t know if I had an unusually heavy case of it, I just don’t have the perspective. My only advice is: “Take your doctor’s advice” (and, for goodness’ sake, contact them immediately).
The Paxlovid was its own thing, too. The disease didn’t seem to affect my taste buds, but man, the Paxlovid sure did. If you ever wanted everything to taste like chalk, that is the drug for you. My appetite was already completely shot, so this just felt like piling on.
I was able to resume work after missing four days thanks to the wonders of working from home. I’m now testing 100% negative, and I feel…tired. I feel very tired. The good news is that I can sleep normally again and the internal thermostat works. The bad news is that sleeping is pretty much all I feel like doing.
In fairness, that’s all I should be doing. The doctor made it very clear that I was in for a month of recuperation. No working out, no doing anything intense, just some light walking. The potential damage to my lungs takes time to heal, and even then, like most folks, the healing will stop short of 100%. After a month, I can ramp it up and push a little. But, when the body says “enough,” I have to listen.
Oh, and I can see Nicole and the kitten again, so that’s good.
One last thing: This is going to sound weird, but…this was the best vacation I’ve had in years and I say that without any exaggeration at all. I was mentally so completely checked out from work that, even just chilling with Nicole and the cats (once that became acceptable), especially last weekend, was heavenly. I haven’t felt that relaxed during my time off in ages. That’s something I probably need to examine with my therapist, no?
So, that’s my story. Let me know if yours was wildly different. I feel like there’s an oral history of this disease starting to develop. Oh, and if you haven’t had it yet: You don’t want it. Keep up with your distancing/masking/vaccinating.
Cheers,
-RK