Near the end of December last year, my mom tested negative for COVID two whole times. She had been quarantining herself in our living room, sicker than I’d seen her in years. Of course I was concerned, but I knew it wasn’t COVID, so I went about my silly little life and looked towards the end of the semester.
The Tuesday before Christmas, I had just finished my dentist appointment when I returned to my mom’s car to find her asleep. She was getting over being sick, so I wasn’t surprised at her tiredness. When I asked her how she felt, she told me she was beginning to feel sick again. That response really concerned me, but then I was hit with an overwhelming wave of tiredness out of nowhere. Suddenly, I was struggling to stay awake on the car ride home. In the coming days, my body ached and I just felt sick all over. I developed a strange, bumpy rash on my one hand. I had this overwhelming sensation of thirst that just wouldn’t go away no matter how much water I drank, keeping me awake at night purely out of the sensory hell it put me through. Sometimes, breathing would just feel strange. Not to a concerning degree, but to the point where I wouldn’t feel like I was breathing in well enough. The rest of my family seemed to have come down with whatever my mom had, as well. My mom continued to feel sick, even after seeming to get over it for a day or so. I kept telling myself, “Hey, at least it isn’t COVID” to comfort myself.
Then, my brother wouldn’t stop coughing. We’d both be in our rooms and I’d hear him coughing from behind my wall. The “at least it’s not COVID” line in my head began to turn on its head. The Monday after Christmas, my brother came home from the doctor and told us, “Guess who has COVID?”. Well! There went all my attempts at telling myself it wasn’t! The morning after, my mom pointed out that the bacon my dad made smelled good. It was then I realized my sense of smell was gone. Who knows how long that had been gone? My dad and I went out, got tested, and tested positive. I kept telling myself that I had gotten over the worst of it and that we’d all be okay. That was true! But, some symptoms lingered.
Personally, my sense of smell isn’t all the way back to normal. While it’s better than it was back in the beginning of the year, it still isn’t the same as it was. My taste wasn’t super impacted, especially in the long term, but my dad has some issues with taste still. I used to have something to track how long I had gone without a sense of smell displayed in my apartment last semester. But, once it hit day 100 without a normal sense of smell, I figured maybe I should stop getting my hopes up.
I also started getting more headaches. I had never really gotten many headaches for most of my life. I would if I was sick or the occasional headache from whatever else may prompt it. But now, these days any little bout of anxiety or stress will make my head hurt a little. At the end of May, I had a pretty bad panic attack. I had had panic attacks before, and it had been a while since my last one, but this one was unlike the others in terms of the aftermath. I was left with a migraine for over a week, and it lingered as a minor headache days later. Other issues with anxiety and stress have left me with headaches I’ve never had before. It’s honestly not my favorite thing.
I am not a physically strong person. You can take one look at me and decide you could snap me like a twig. Additionally, I have Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (I won’t get super in depth about what that is in this article, but just know my collagen is absolutely garbage and my joints are bad). So, getting tired and achy after moving is nothing new to me. That said, my post COVID life has been much more full of aches, pains, and tiredness after doing things that I have never experienced before. My body grows tired so much quicker now. The aching in my legs, hips, and back, have gotten noticeably worse after doing things I’ve been doing my whole life. I noticed this a lot over the summer when we were in Narragansett and Boston. Walking around for a reasonable amount of time has usually made me tired and left some aches in my legs. This time was different. I found myself in pain after each day, much more than my usual soreness. Coming back to campus was no different. Walking to and from classes still leaves my legs and back in shambles. My physical abilities, while never perfect, have definitely gotten noticeably worse.
There are a lot more serious long term COVID effects than I experience, such as organ damage, blood clots, heart attacks, and the like have been seen in other past COVID patients. On the first of October, my dad had a massive stroke out of nowhere. He is alive and recovering very well now, but still it was a huge surprise to everyone. The doctors who worked on my dad say it is likely linked to his anatomy and how the arteries in his neck are. However, to have such a massive stroke entirely out of nowhere after having COVID and having experienced a multitude of other long-term effects honestly makes me wonder if the way his body operated after housing this virus also played a role. I was telling him about this article and he said, “It could sometimes lead to strokes. I don’t think so for this one, though”. I don’t know Vinnie, I’m not entirely convinced. I probably shouldn’t argue with a recovering stroke victim, though.
I think COVID has impacted my life in the long term much more than I anticipated it would. I have my doubts that my sense of smell will ever be fully back, but honestly I guess I’m used to it now. Please don’t get COVID. That shit sucks.
I got covid in January of 2021.
I was exposed on a Saturday, felt fine Sunday night, but by Monday, I was well and truly sick.
The cough came on so suddenly I was convinced it was just allergies. I was streaming a few episodes of Hannibal with my friend over Zoom and I kept having to mute myself to suffer through coughing fits.
When you’re like me, though, and you’ve spent a good amount of your teenage life hacking up a lung because of allergies, being hit over the head randomly with a cough isn’t terribly unusual. In January? Maybe a little. But generally? I wasn’t worried.
Tuesday morning, I woke up feeling wrong. Not bad, necessarily, but wrong. Wrong enough that, with my weirdly persistent cough, I decided to take my temperature and discovered a low grade fever. I thought it was just a seasonal sickness– I actually spent the morning in the living room because it hadn’t even occurred to me that I had, you know, Thee Illness.
At about three o’clock on Tuesday, I suddenly felt like I’d been hit by a truck. The body aches came on fast. My head hurt. My cough got worse.
A couple mornings later, I lost my sense of smell.
When my mother confirmed that the person who had gotten me sick had covid, I started laughing so hard I thought I was going to throw up.
I’d done everything right. I’d stayed inside for ten months, hadn’t seen friends, had worn masks on the rare occasion I’d needed to leave my house– and I still got covid.
I lost my taste before I got my test results back, so all it really did was tell me what I already knew.
The only way I could eat was by dousing everything in large amounts of hot sauce. You know in iZombie how Liv can only eat brains with hot sauce otherwise she can’t taste them? It’s exactly like that. I was so desperate for the concept of taste that the heat was thrilling.
Having covid was isolating. All I really wanted for a majority of the two weeks was a hug, but I couldn’t even pet my cat in fear of spreading germs.
I spent the entire time sitting in my room. On the rare occasion I needed to leave for food (I wasn’t hungry. At all), or water, or anything else, I wiped everything I touched with a Clorox wipe. I slept half the time, I coughed the other half. Getting into the shower took more energy than I had most days. I had a headache that straddled the border of being a migraine for two straight weeks, but in hindsight I’m not sure if it was because I wasn’t drinking coffee, or if it was from covid.
The most ironic part of it all was getting a positive test the same week I became eligible to get vaccinated. Because of the antibodies that would linger in my system, my doctor recommended I put off getting vaccinated until three months later to cut back on side effects.
(But the second shot still knocked me out for two days.)
However, The worst part of covid was the aftermath. Before I got sick, I was going on five mile walks most days, my asthma was solely allergy reactive, and I could eat peanut butter.
My first walk after having covid, I walked a quarter of a mile and came back so out of breath I needed to use my rescue inhaler. I would get out of breath carrying kitty litter into the garage. I tried to go on a bike ride and triggered an asthma attack that nearly made me pass out and ended up lasting for three hours.
Even after being deemed non-contagious, my allergist’s office wouldn’t let me do any breathalyzer tests. I didn’t get checked out besides having a Peak Flow Meter tossed at me. My doctor just prescribed me a new (it had come out three days before) inhaler with bluetooth capabilities and sent me on my way. I lovingly named it Richard in the fancy mobile app that it needed to function. Thankfully, the inhaler helped, and after a month (and a lot of working to get my body used to being active again, my asthma went back to its normal, manageable levels.
And as bad as that was– the breathing thing, I mean– the parosmia is the worst part.
For anyone fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the term, parosmia is a disruption in the sense of smell. It’s purely psychiatric, relatively harmless, and a million times worse than not being able to smell at all.
When I first started regaining my sense of taste and smell, I was warned that things would taste bad for the first few days. They were right– chocolate tasted sour, coffee tasted purely like acid,
I complained, for weeks, about something smelling foul in our house. It smelled burnt, but also rotten, with a hint of mildew.. Febreez didn’t cover it, neither did candles. It was in the fridge, in the pantry, in the bathrooms. My mother had no idea what I was talking about, neither did anyone else who came into the house.
The smell of the cat’s food, the same flavors and brand we’ve always given him, made me gag. I had to start using a different body wash because mine, which I’ve used since middle school, smelled entirely like chemicals. Peanut butter, maybe my favorite food in the entire world, tastes burnt and soiled.
My mother thought I was just making this all up for months until, in a call with my cousin whose entire family had covid a few months before me, mentioned off-handed that none of them can eat peanut butter anymore because just the smell of it makes their stomachs churn.
I shouldn’t complain. I know people whose covid stories are worse than mine. I personally know people who have died from it, people who were hospitalized and intubated because of it, and people who were left with chronic illness after having it. I’m lucky to be back to relatively full health. My only lingering symptoms are parosmia and fatigue.
It’s still frustrating.
I felt healthy before having covid. I had energy. Now, I sleep ten hours every night and still wake up feeling like I didn’t sleep at all.
I guess my point is, get vaccinated if you haven’t yet. You don’t want covid.
