I caught COVID just after Christmas, and tested positive on the first of January. Great way to start out the year, right? I felt decent on that first day, even drove home from urgent care singing along to pop punk in my car. Nothing unusual.
And then I woke up on the 11th and realized classes started on the 10th.
Obviously, a lot happened during those ten days, but I don't actually remember a lot of it. I remember being miserable. I remember changing my mom's bedsheets for her and complaining that she was going to get me even sicker (she also had COVID). I remember that I survived on NyQuil and cough drops. I remember being so emotionally unstable that I thought my grandmother was mad at me and cried for a half an hour (she wasn't mad at me).
I was so delirious I forgot to order my textbooks for this semester, ordered them late, and had to email my teachers to let them know I couldn't actually do my homework for the first week of classes...or like...come to class... I actually fell asleep in my favorite teacher's class (World Civ, which is unlike me, because hi I'm a history major) because I took NyQuil and That Was A Mistake.
You know Puffs Plus tissues? They're the really soft tissues infused with lotion. They're supposed to be good for your nose, so you don't just rub it raw when you have a cold. Well, when I woke up, I found three empty boxes of those tissues, a half empty one next to my bed, and a terrible rash under my nose where I've been blowing and blowing and rubbing and rubbing. So now I'm slathering my face in petroleum jelly and cocoa butter to try and alleviate that pain, because apparently even the gentlest of lotions make friction burns sting like crazy.
Also, I've been blowing my nose so much that I just have a constant nosebleed. Not my usual recurring nosebleed, no. It's just constantly bleeding.
My sense of taste hasn't come back yet, either, not completely.
COVID swept through more than half of my family of 10, and none of us had the same symptoms.
- My cousin Johnny has muscle and nerve problems, and that's mainly the type of symptoms he suffered, aside from the tell-tale cough and fever.
- My mom has all of the health problems, and she experienced all of the symptoms listed on the sheets you fill out at the doctor's offices.
- Johnny says his mother, who has vision problems, experienced double vision for a solid week when she caught it.
- My uncle, who is diabetic, ended up in the hospital with his blood sugar so high they put him in the ICU.
- I have had sinus issues my entire life. All of my symptoms were from the shoulders up. And I had every last one, right down to the "trouble assessing". I even had an ear infection so bad that my ears still hurt, even though I finished the antibiotic weeks ago.
- My grandmother had cancer. She recently went through a rough round of chemotherapy before her surgery to actually remove the cancer. She caught COVID, too...but she doesn't have any base health issues, so she coughed for like four days and then she was fine.
- My great-great aunt, 84 years old, who hardly ever gets sick and is healthier than anyone else in my family, was around all of us when we were infected-but-not-yet-showing-symptoms, and around my grandmother as she was sick...and she just didn't get sick at all. Nothing. She's fine.
- Johnny's little sister, Chloe, didn't come out of her room for almost three weeks after he got sick unless everyone else was already locked in their rooms for the night. Smart girl, because my aunt and uncle followed along on the Sick Train. She's a master of evasion. Didn't get sick at all.
