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Woke up this morning
That’s it, that’s the tweet Three weeks ago I was too sick to get out of bed, thought I might only have five days to live Now I’m still fighting symptoms, still surprised day after day by weird new feelings I’ve never had before, What Fresh Hell is This This is why COVID is so different from the flu, so many moments where you just freeze like WHAT just happened inside my face? Is that an actual beetle crawling up my sinus or does it just feel that way? Had night terrors again last night, woke up standing next to the bed like someone out of Paranormal Activity, woke my husband up, but then that’s probably just me, not COVID Finally getting my sense of smell back, guess what are the first two things I smelled Damp towel, garbage can Confirming my claim that most smells are not a value add Right now, after these three weeks, I finally feel like I just have a bad head cold/sinus infection Rather than someone who is still crawling off her deathbed Now, way back on March 15, the day I was exposed, we didn’t have all the information we have now At that time, four days before the stay at home order, not even the bars had been closed, that was later that day, we weren’t doing anything wrong We had all stopped shaking hands or hugging a week ago Our state had 334 cases, six deaths As of today, over 33,000 cases and over 1200 deaths, just here My hubby says “that’s a two orders of magnitude increase WHILE you were sick” Good point babe, thank you The US as a whole had 3500 cases and 62 people had died For a history student, that was a problem, for most people, eh, that’s like E. coli rules We’re starting to get the idea, but most of us still don’t understand the difference between linear progression and exponential growth, the penny on the chessboard problem It doubles every week, this should be bothering people more than it does! COVID-19 has already killed more Americans than the Korean War IN TWO MONTHS (Remember our first fatality was Feb. 29) For me there have been three problems while I have been sick
Understanding that my friends, my family, my neighbors might have to go through what I have, partly because people are out there claiming this is “just a cold” or “just the flu” Right now, if the statistics are right, not even 1% of Americans have been exposed yet It’s easy not to believe it’s real or that it will come for anyone you know Three months from now that probably won’t be true anymore One of the problems when we first became aware of coronavirus was the impression that it only killed elderly people, idea got out there that young people are immune, this is false but it cost us I’m 44, I have zero pre-existing conditions I had a “mild” case The first week I was so sick, all I could do was sit perfectly still, if I moved my head even half an inch I would get vertigo, too sick to read, too sick to watch tv It wasn’t until the second week that I thought I would die Only 1 in 5 people on ventilators were surviving, at least at the time there were no treatments No pills, no vaccinations, not enough tests, no convalescent plasma, no antibody tests Hopefully that will all change soon, but for at least the first wave, it was bad enough to be sick, even worse knowing there wasn’t much anyone could do to help A lot of people seem to think COVID-19 is nothing to worry about, I want to ask them, do you have three weeks of sick leave at work? Or do you think you could just push through? I don’t have kids, my husband did 100% of the cooking and cleaning, took care of me while working 60 hours a week, for three weeks, he barely got sick, not everyone has been so lucky Here is a list of all the symptoms I had, supposed mild case: Weakness, fatigue, malaise, tremors, dizziness, vertigo, headache, chills, the rigors (look it up), stomach pain, feeling faint, ears ringing, lost my voice, complete loss of sense of taste and smell for three weeks, memory problems, confusion, shortness of breath, heart palpitations Fun, right? Now add in the high fever, cough, sore throat, body ache, vomiting, diarrhea, or fainting and loss of consciousness for days on end that the moderate cases have had Did you know that some of the severe cases have had blood clots, organ failure, seizures, or strokes? A lot can happen to someone who doesn’t die All of this will start to sound more and more familiar as more people get sick, sorry to say I said sometime back that I don’t think people will really start taking the coronavirus seriously until the third wave But I thought there would actually be separate and distinct waves That we would genuinely think we had it beat, no new cases, before it cropped up again Now someone has gone and opened the beaches back up when cases are actively still climbing I don’t get this at all, if none of the businesses are open, there is no economic benefit, just people canceling social distancing and not even buying an ice cream cone We’re still in the first wave That “flatten the curve” graph made us think the first peak would be over quickly I was exposed before my state’s stay-at-home order, in fact before any state, it was the same day the CDC suggested no gatherings of more than 50 people, I was in a group of 7 I’ve watched this thing unfold mostly from my sickbed I’m under quarantine until I have been symptom-free for 72 hours, so far my record is about 12 I’m just one person, sure, but I could probably still infect someone, makes me feel disgusting and ashamed It’s very weird to think that by the time I feel well enough to get fully dressed and leave my apartment, I might be able to go out for dinner and a movie, that will be fine for me if I wind up with antibodies and immunity I do worry about everyone else, I worry a lot, all I can really do is share my personal experience and hope it is convincing, love to all Comments are closed.
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AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. Archives
August 2021
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