I've tried to keep my tone on the boards relatively calm, trying to present objective, scientifically backed perspectives while people share snippets of half of a story they heard someone else tell them that they saw on the news. And quite frankly, I'm over it. Since other people have shared their anecdotal evidence, I'll share mine. I didn't want to share this because I don't want it to be a pity party for me and didn't want to use my own story in a situation that I though could be easily responded to with the best available scientific facts. But I'm sick of hearing the stories about how COVID isn't bad, its just like the flu, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, here it goes.
I may have said this before, but my wife works at a hospital in a non-doctor, non-nurse, patient-forward role. As soon at the pandemic hit, we knew we had dual responsibilities to both our community and the hospital. Just working at the hospital would give her (and indirectly me) an increased risk of getting COVID and spreading it to the community. We also knew that it was important for her not to take it into the hospital to spread it. We took the precautions very seriously, and still do to this day. I haven't had a haircut, eaten inside a restaurant, or gathered in person with friends for about 5 months. There was at least once where she was exposed to someone who later tested positive and we chose to sleep in separate beds and use separate bathrooms as a precaution. After the 14 days of symptom monitoring (she wasn't required to self quarantine because she worked at the hospital), we went back to our normal routine.
When the cases started creeping up in the hospital, she was moved to a role to support doctors and nurses in putting on and taking off their PPE on COVID floors. Basically she sat on the COVID floors for 20-30 hours a week, working in her typical role the other 10-20 hours, making sure the people going in and out of COVID rooms put on their PPE correctly and and taking it off and disposing of it correctly. She also helped supervise the stock of PPE available on the floor. Just the logistics of this were difficult. She was working mornings, nights, and days all in the same week, for several weeks she had no more than a day off in a row. The physical and mental exhaustion of coming home from working in that environment were difficult on her. Luckily I was working from home while this was all going on and could take care of the house while she worked and rested.
From the beginning of March until about the end of June, that was our life. She was working 6 days a week and I was at home by myself with our dog most of that time. Then on Saturday, June 20, she started to not feel well. It started as an elevated temperature (in the 99.0-99.5 range) and sinus congestion with some minor nausea. At that point I think we both new what was happening. We started taking the same precautions as before, sleeping in separate beds and using separate bathrooms, but we started to make sure that one of us was wearing a mask around the other at all times. We sat in the living room contacting her work, doing a teledoc appointment, taking symptom surveys, researching, and no one could really tell us what to do or whether to get tested. Her teledoc told her it was a sinus infection and prescribed her an antibiotic and steroid just in case and at one point, because of the nausea, gave her the run around about being pregnant. On Monday, she finally got a hold of someone at work who asked if she was working on COVID floors and when she answered yes, finally set up a testing appointment.
For the rest of the day Monday she was in denial. "It could come back negative." "I'll start to feel better in a few days." But I think we both knew.
We took her to get tested on Tuesday, June 23. By this point she had mental and physical exhaustion, a loss of appetite, shortness of breath, coughing at night, nausea, and still just a low-grade fever. I drove her to go get tested and we parked behind this doctor's office in a designated spot. A person came out in, essentially, a HAZMAT suit. She confirmed her name and information then took out the testing swab. I knew what was going to happen, so I didn't look, but they shoved the testing swab up her noes and into her nasal cavity. If you've ever had a flu test, they do something similar, it feels like they're trying to probe your brain through your nose.
For the rest of the day and into the next day, more denial. At this point she started to be confined to bed. One night she texted me, "I'm going to try to take a shower." After I heard the water turn off, she texted me again, "I need to lay down, I'm exhausted after my shower." The once or twice a day she would come down stairs, she would be out of breath and would have to stop to sit down because she was dizzy. One time she told me she had to sit down because she was out of breath because she "did a lap around the kitchen." I don't know if you've ever watched a loved one gasp for air, but it's scary, especially when you know you can't physically comfort them.
Either Wednesday or Thursday she got her result, positive for COVID-19. It was her work who had told her of her result and they said someone would call back to ask some questions about who she had been in contact with at the hospital. I could see her trying to go through every interaction she'd had over the past week or so. She started to get scared that she may have unknowingly exposed some of her coworkers, many of whom we are friends with. She started to feel guilty about that one time she took her mask off for a couple of minutes in the break room. She was worried that her coworkers would be mad at her, especially if one of them got really sick or died. At the end of the day it turns out she had been VERY careful at work and some people had to monitor symptoms, but no one got it from her.
The VDH contact tracer didn't call for about 5 days after the positive test. They asked both of us if she had been around anyone unmasked for more than 15 minutes in the two days before her symptoms started. At that point we were in Phase 2, we could have eaten outdoors, eaten indoors, gone to retail stores, gone to the gym, gone to the pool to exercise, or attended church; but we hadn't done any of those things because we knew we had a higher risk of getting it and spreading it. We can confidently say the node ends with us. The VDH contact tracer called me a day after my wife and asked the same questions. They signed me up for a text message based symptom monitoring system and told me to self-quarantine for 14 days after my wife's symptoms had started.
My wife's symptoms persisted for 5 weeks.
5 weeks.
Not 5 days, 5 weeks. In fact according to a study posted on the
CDC's website about the duration of symptoms after testing:
Quote:"Not returning to usual health within 2–3 weeks of testing was reported by approximately one third of respondents. Even among young adults aged 18–34 years with no chronic medical conditions, nearly one in five reported that they had not returned to their usual state of health 14–21 days after testing."
My wife is 30. She has no preexisting health conditions and does not meet the CDC's criteria for being at risk for getting a severe case of COVID. And, quite frankly, this was still a mild case.
So for 5 weeks I held down the house while my wife stayed in bed for about 85%-90% of the day. We didn't eat in the same room, we didn't sleep in the same room, we didn't hug, we didn't kiss, if we were around each other it was only masked. We didn't do anything for the Fourth of July. I made a steak dinner for our anniversary and we ate it in separate rooms.
Her symptoms just stayed the same for about 4 weeks. We got to the point were we were just letting our parents know if there were any changes because it just kept going.
During the last couple of weeks her energy started to come back. Basically the floor and ceiling of her high and low energy both got higher. But she would have two good days and one really bad day, it was really frustrating for her (she doesn't do being sick very well). It was kind of that upward trajectory like the stock market, ups and downs, but in an upward direction.
We had talked a lot about what a symptom free day would look like. We knew she would be fatigued getting up and walking around because she had been mostly confined to bed for 4 weeks. She started having the physical and mental energy to color and do puzzles, her mood was improving. Her job was to tell me when she thought symptom day one was and my job was to tell her if it wasn't actually symptom day one.
The last few days of her symptoms she got better really quickly. And she experienced her first symptom free day on Friday, July 24. Her return to work criteria was 72 hours without symptoms, so by Monday she was back at work. It was difficult for her to get back into the swing of things both mentally and physically.
As of today she's pretty close to 100%, which is awesome. Somehow I ended up not getting symptoms, I think it was because we were really careful about distancing and mask wearing while she was sick. Moving forward I'm treating it as if I can still get it, because I don't have evidence that I can't. Is it likely that I got it and had it asymptomatically? Yes. But based on what we know right now that's not super helpful information.
Out of an abundance of caution, we're still not sleeping in the same room. I have some health stats that don't rise to the level of the CDC's "at risk" categories, but I'm pretty close. Not to get too personal, but we just kissed again last night for the first time in 6ish weeks. We're around each other unmasked again. It's not back to normal, but it's pretty close.
I don't know what my point about typing this all up was, specifically, but I'm just tired of seeing people taking things out of context or presenting little or no nuance in their arguments. Spare me with the flu comparisons and information about how such and such a type of person shouldn't get such and such a type of sick, I'm done with it.
Please don't get COVID. It's the world's worst slot machine and the prizes all suck. Please don't spread this to people, remember that you're spreading it when you don't know you have it. After you know you've had it, you've probably already spread it. And again, it might not be about you getting it, it might be about spreading it to your neighbor who spreads it to their mom or spreading it to you own mom. This is about a lot more than just you and me.
Mods, if you want to take this down, feel free. And if you made it this far or skipped to the bottom, don't put yourself in a position to get and spread COVID please.