fireflowersims:

Covid symptoms and how they developed + recovery (pt 1)

Heya folks, so…. After I caught the resident plague, I really haven’t posted any updates about my health to tumblr yet, so let’s resolve that.

The thing I’d like to start with is just how my symptoms progressed, as this might be useful to people experiencing similar things.

For background: I’ve been vaccinated fully with Pfizer. First shot in July, second in August. I have no underlying health issues.

It started on Tuesday evening, the ninth of November. I had just spent the evening at my folks watching a show and my throat was feeling kinda rough. So, I thought to myself “I must have eaten too many salty snacks. I should take the day off to hydrate tomorrow”. So, I did just that. I alerted my boss that I wasn’t feeling well and would stay home that day, practicing self care. However, at the end of the day, the roughness hadn’t gone away yet.

Then Thursday came. It hadn’t gone away yet and my eyes felt like how they feel when I’m anywhere near daffodils. You see, I’m allergic to those flowers and my typical reaction to that is burning eyes. I felt like I was constantly being exposed to daffodils. Indoor, outdoor, didn’t matter. Just the constant feel of daffodils. By this time I had also started sneezing. That evening I went to the store for some groceries and bought some soothing thyme syrup while I was at it, since my throat was still acting up.

I don’t know 100% when, but around this time, I remember being in the town center, holding a yummy drink, mouth mask on and sneezing. I thought to myself “geez, I’m glad I’m wearing a mask or those germs would’ve gone much farther”

On Friday I made a test appointment for the next day as the symptoms weren’t going away.

I’m not 100% sure when I developed headaches, but I did. They were manageable with 500mg paracetamol.

Saturday I got swabbed. As my previous two experiences with the nose swab have been… Nasty in the past, I asked the guy at the test site to swab my left nostril instead of the right one which had been subjected to swab violence twice already. This turned out to be a great idea, as the discomfort went away much faster.

The next day, I saw I had received an email from the health services: my test results were in. I didn’t log in to see the results, so imagine my surprise when a few hours later I got a phone call from an unknown number. “Hello, this is GGD Gelderland Midden, are you [real name]?”. Immediate dread.

I had covid.

This got a lot longer than I thought, so I’ll continue in pt 2 which wil probably be a reblog of this post.

Covid symptoms and how they developed + recovery (pt 2)

Sooo, truth be told, I probably spent too much time modding Skyrim SE than, ya know, resting, when my covid was at its peak. But hey, let’s talk about symptoms and how I managed them.

So, one thing I forgot to mention, was that that Friday I had asked my mom to get me some nasal spray. Good thing I asked, because I’d make heavy use of it throughout the week. I got regular brine solution and xylometazoline. The latter can only be used for a week, but clears out the nostrils like crazy.

Okay, so my symptoms were as follows:

• A rough, scratchy throat
• Headaches
• (occasional) fever
• Sneezing
• Burning eyes
• Tiredness
• Stuffy nose

Basically, a nasty cold. The thing that differentiated it from the flu for me, was the lack of dizziness or nausea. If I get the flu, I get dizzy and will probably throw up at least once. I never got those symptoms with covid. Honestly, I’ve had nastier flus*

*this does not mean that covid is the flu. I am vaccinated against the ‘rona which gave me an advantage and covid still majorly sucked. Get vaccinated, yo. Covid ain’t a flu. (Also, the flu I’m referring to hit me so hard I lost most of my strength thanks to being bedbound for a solid three days at least, so don’t underestimate the flu either.)

But, let’s talk symptom management. For my rough throat I drank TONS of hot tea. This helped keep my throat from getting rough. Also, staying hydrated is of the utmost importance, especially if you have covid. I also took the occasional spoon of medicinal thyme syrup to coat my throat. Whenever I’d get a headache, I would typically try to ignore it, but when it got too rough, I took a single 500mg paracetamol pill. For my nasal passages I would use xylometazoline for when it was feeling really stuffed and regular brine solution nasal spray when it wasn’t. I also made sure to get enough sleep.

What was nastier than symptom management however, was minimizing the chances of infecting my roommates. For that, I was instructed to clean the kitchen and toilet after using it and to wipe down anything (door knobs, switches, etc) that I had touched. I also had to keep my trash separateandwash my hands often. I also kept my room ventilated. Going to the toilet involved washing my hands before going, then washing my hands after I did my business, then wiping down the toilet, wiping down the doorknobs, then throwing away the trash and washing my hands again in my own room. Cooking meant wearing a face mask and of course: much cleaning.

After about a week or so after I had developed my initial symptoms, I was finally symptom free! However, unfortunately shortly after that, I lost my sense of smell. Fortunately my taste remained and still is intact. But it was not fun. However, it has been steadily getting better again.

The first week after covid, I was definitely still busy “uitzieken” as we’d say in Dutch; riding out the sickness, taking it easy to recover. I was definitely feeling physically weak(er). And the laundry… Damn, everything had to be washed for a long time at 40C…

At the moment of writing, I have been covid free for a while and quite happy about it!

However, as it is, I currently sleep quite a bit more than I used to. I’m not sure if it’s because of covid or the short days though. Physically, I can still function at about the same level as I was able to pre-covid, though it just tires me out a bit faster. And as I said; though I lost my sense of smell after covid had passed, I am now regaining it rapidly.

Gosh, you wouldn’t believe how happy I was to smell a cup of coffee. It was heavenly to smell that black gold.

I don’t believe I have long covid. If I still sleep and tire at this rate after the days start lengthening again, I’ll start to worry. But for now, I’m happy to be allowed out again and blessed to have survived this with my sense of taste intact. Not all have that privilege. Another blessing was that to my knowledge, I did not infect anyone I was in contact with.

So, that was my covid experience. Not fun to experience, but perhaps illuminating to others. And definitely a story to tell.

Covid symptoms and how they developed + recovery (pt 1)

Heya folks, so…. After I caught the resident plague, I really haven’t posted any updates about my health to tumblr yet, so let’s resolve that.

The thing I’d like to start with is just how my symptoms progressed, as this might be useful to people experiencing similar things.

For background: I’ve been vaccinated fully with Pfizer. First shot in July, second in August. I have no underlying health issues.

It started on Tuesday evening, the ninth of November. I had just spent the evening at my folks watching a show and my throat was feeling kinda rough. So, I thought to myself “I must have eaten too many salty snacks. I should take the day off to hydrate tomorrow”. So, I did just that. I alerted my boss that I wasn’t feeling well and would stay home that day, practicing self care. However, at the end of the day, the roughness hadn’t gone away yet.

Then Thursday came. It hadn’t gone away yet and my eyes felt like how they feel when I’m anywhere near daffodils. You see, I’m allergic to those flowers and my typical reaction to that is burning eyes. I felt like I was constantly being exposed to daffodils. Indoor, outdoor, didn’t matter. Just the constant feel of daffodils. By this time I had also started sneezing. That evening I went to the store for some groceries and bought some soothing thyme syrup while I was at it, since my throat was still acting up.

I don’t know 100% when, but around this time, I remember being in the town center, holding a yummy drink, mouth mask on and sneezing. I thought to myself “geez, I’m glad I’m wearing a mask or those germs would’ve gone much farther”

On Friday I made a test appointment for the next day as the symptoms weren’t going away.

I’m not 100% sure when I developed headaches, but I did. They were manageable with 500mg paracetamol.

Saturday I got swabbed. As my previous two experiences with the nose swab have been… Nasty in the past, I asked the guy at the test site to swab my left nostril instead of the right one which had been subjected to swab violence twice already. This turned out to be a great idea, as the discomfort went away much faster.

The next day, I saw I had received an email from the health services: my test results were in. I didn’t log in to see the results, so imagine my surprise when a few hours later I got a phone call from an unknown number. “Hello, this is GGD Gelderland Midden, are you [real name]?”. Immediate dread.

I had covid.

This got a lot longer than I thought, so I’ll continue in pt 2 which wil probably be a reblog of this post.