I began feeling unwell the Friday night before Mother’s Day. My glands under my chin and on my left side of my jaw were swollen, a common symptom for me when I’m coming down with a bad cold or having a bout with allergies. By Sat night it was bad enough my husband decided to sleep in our guest bedroom “just in case it was the flu” and I didn’t let my son lie in the bed with me to snuggle and watch movies like we often do on weekends.
By Sunday we cancelled the plans we had made to meet my parents to celebrate Mother’s Day. We had planned to meet them at an outdoor location halfway between our two towns to eat take-out “together” from our respective cars. But as my glands grew more and more painful and I feared that what I had might actually be contagious, we cancelled.
Monday morning I called the telemedic number through my insurance company fearing an actual appointment in a drs office where I might contract the Coronavirus while there. Since my main symptom was swollen glands with no fever or coughing, the nurse diagnosed an upper respiratory infection and prescribed Sudafed and a neti pot. I agreed this sounded like a good first attempt to help me heal though I still thought maybe I’d need antibiotics eventually, but I agreed to try this first.
By Monday night I was running fever and by Tuesday the fever was higher than any fever I’d had in my adult life, up over 103.
Wednesday I called my dr and she recommended I go to be tested for Covid-19. She was not convinced I had it, she actually had me tested for strep as well and thought this was what I had, but said due to the nature of my job (I work in close contact w children in the social work field) she thought it best to rule that out. I was actually frustrated because I really just wanted her to prescribe me some antibiotics to knock out whatever sinus infection I believed I had, but I understood her wanting me to be tested first.
I was tested that same day and my results did not come back until Saturday. She had warned me that if I went to the ER and told them I had been tested for Coronavirus they would not admit me unless I was having life or death problems with breathing. She prescribed 3 ibuprofen, 3 times per day for fever. (Acetaminophen is actually recommended for covid patients but I am allergic.)
The three days that followed while waiting for my results were terrible. I truly thought I was going to die and if not, at least have major complications from whatever infection I believed was wreaking havoc on my sinuses. It was awful. My whole face and head hurt and though I still didn’t have much of a cough, I was starting to have a bit of a runny nose and congestion. I convinced myself the neti pot was helping, at least my glands were less swollen but the fever, oh my, the fever! It was like nothing I have ever experienced.
When a fever gets that high it hurts everywhere and in ways I didn’t know my body could hurt. My husband (who still believed I didn’t really have Coronavirus) would come in to check on me and find me shaking uncontrollably in the bed.
My precious parents, worried and texting me from afar, wanted me to go to the ER by Friday night when we had not heard anything from my testing. By this point I was afraid to infect my husband (who does have underlying medical conditions- high blood pressure and diabetes) if I did have the Coronavirus and knew that even sitting in the car with him as he drove me to the hospital could cause him to potentially contract it. I didn’t know what to do, so I suffered alone in my room, tried to sleep and to not worry as best I could.
On Saturday the dr called with my results. I was shocked, but, as crazy as it sounds, I was somewhat relieved to hear I had Covid-19. I was just happy to know what it was and to be able to create a real plan of action for how to actually treat it. But turns out the “plan” was to keep doing basically what I was doing, 3 ibuprofen, 3 times a day, add Vitamin C and D, try to rest, try to eat and drink plenty of water. And no going to the ER unless you can’t breathe because they won’t let you in! That’s it. That’s all I was told. (I was actually also told that someone from the hospital would check in with me daily, but I only got two texts within the next 15 days from them when I had not contacted them first.)
For the next two weeks I suffered alone in my bedroom with no one to help me care for myself but me. My precious husband loaded up an ice chest with bottled waters and oranges. He left bags of ice and meals for me when I needed it and checked in on me regularly but he could not, did not, enter the room again.
The thing about fever over 103 is that you can barely think, much less move or function. But when you are all alone and it’s time to take more ibuprofen to help bring the temp down there is no one there to help you take it, no matter how weak or sick you feel. You have to give yourself a little pep talk, force yourself to sit up and do it. Sometimes you fall back asleep, drifting into an almost comatose slumber where you can’t tell the difference between reality and dreams. You can’t remember if you’ve taken the meds or not and when you check the clock an hour has passed and your fever is now over 104.
I was so weak at times that pulling open the ice chest to retrieve a bottled water was difficult, an endurance test that would leave me worn out. I didn’t feel like sitting up to eat, everything turned my stomach, but I craved ice cold water as the high temps rendered me dehydrated. My husband ordered me some Gatorade on amazon but it wouldn’t reach me until the second week.
By ten days in I had run out of my ibuprofen. 3 pills, 3 times a day for ten days is a full 90 pill bottle gone. Something we had not anticipated. My husband had to steal away from our quarantine to go to the pharmacy drive through. (By the end I would take over 140 capsules of ibuprofen in just over two weeks time.)
Something else that no one talks about because it is personal and embarrassing, but that was part of my hell was the incontinence. Because I am a 40 year old woman who has given birth I suffer from this minimally on the regular. But as my cough began to really set in and become more severe it became more of a problem. While at the pharmacy my husband also picked up some pads for dealing with this problem but even they did not help entirely.
I could not leave the bedroom to go wash sheets or towels or undergarments in our washing machine and eventually I ran out of clean ones. So I found myself, barely strong enough to walk to the bathroom, holding myself up on the sink as I could barely stand, rinsing out urine soaked clothing and hanging it to dry. (Again we ordered new things on amazon but even the fastest delivery takes a couple of days.)
I got a rash of red painful dots on my arms and fingers. I had what I later learned to be what Drs are calling “Covid Digits” where the fingers and toes and extremities of the body ache because blood circulation is not properly reaching them. It hurt so badly it woke me up at night and nothing I took or did helped.
My entire head hurt. I have suffered from migraines virtually my entire life, but this was different. Not concentrated to one area but rather encompassing my whole head and radiating to my neck and shoulders.
Thankfully my cough and congestion was more upper respiratory and did not settle much in my lungs. I tried hard to get the junk I was coughing up out and not ingest it back into my body.
There were nights, several of them, that I lied awake in bed, unable to sleep from the pain, and cried, pleading with God to please not let me die. I wasn’t afraid of death, I have no fear of the afterlife for myself knowing that Jesus awaits, but I didn’t want to leave my son without a mother; I didn’t want to leave my husband to care for an autistic son alone.
Towards the end before the fever finally broke and stayed down I had a pretty good routine. I knew when I would be able sleep, when I’d feel good enough to eat a little bit, when I’d feel well enough to call my son in the other room to try to reassure him that mommy was ok. I also knew the times of day and night when, between doses as the meds began to wear off, the fever would creep back up and the pain would set in. As I grew weary from dealing with the fever day after day I began to be more and more fearful, especially of the night time hours when I knew it would get the highest. I would call my husband around midnight to tell him goodnight, my last dosage before the morning just beginning to kick in. Often times I’d cry talking to him, fearful of the pain I knew was coming that I’d be dealing w alone, fearful that I might not wake up in the morning and he’d have to come in and find me.
The last few days before it finally broke I began to have hallucinations. I had strangely vivid, and terribly odd dreams, that I knew were not real but that I somehow could not awaken myself from. It felt almost like an out of body experience, often times as though I was looking down at myself, telling my conscious mind that what the subconscious was dreaming was not real. I had to remind myself that I was in control of my body and that I could find the strength to sit up, wake up and care for myself, even when I really didn’t. I honestly don’t know how I got through it alone.
But I did. By the grace of God, I did. And I feel like a freaking warrior.
I may forever be weakened physically for what I endured in some ways. New research is coming out that proves the virus changes us.
But I completed a virtual 5k last weekend just to prove to Covid-19 that it did not break me.
The virus definitely changed me.
I am stronger. I am wiser. I am more grateful.
I am careful and I believe in the advice of those who are trying to protect us.
I am a survivor and I know that with God there is no fire I can not walk through knowing He walks with me.
Please, if you or someone you know is believing the lie that this thing is not that bad, or that only the elderly suffer with it, read and share my story! I am a survivor of this terrible disease but you don’t have to be, bc you don’t have to also get it if we all work together to prevent it!
Protect yourself and have the common decency to protect others.
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