Life With Covid... So Far

Hints of what to come: 

When we arrived home, unloading the car was exhausting. More so than usual. The house was slowly coming down to temperature, about a 30 degree drop from outside in that hot afternoon. I'd haul something in, then sit for half an hour, then go out for the next load. A few things are still in the car, but their final destinations are actually elsewhere. I was so wiped out that much of what I brought in is still in piles around the house. It turns out I had a good reason.

I felt much recovered the next morning, crediting it with the AC catching up the house, and met two friends at the community pool at noon for some pool walking and good conversation. I brought fresh peaches to share that I'd picked up in Palisade, letting them know they'd be fully ripe Sunday morning, the next day. We didn't walk long since I pulled out with a charlie horse, likely from dehydration. I'd had those before, and taking in more water before hitting the pool usually did the job of preventing them. I'm pretty sure I was a little dehydrated from the trip, since who needs al those extra potty stops, but getting back into pool walking takes attention to some details that need repetition to get back in the routine.  We sat along the pool for a while and chatted, despite the heat, before heading home.

Several hours later I began to feel a bit unwell.  I'd had Steve use the wrist technique to inform me of what I already knew. I had a fever. His wrist was cold! Time to go to bed. In this case it meant lying on half the bed. I'd emptied out the clothes I brought south, tossed the dirty ones in the hamper,  but hadn't hung up those still clean. It didn't matter. The fever kept me shivering, what moments I was aware of, for about 4 hours, then suddenly I was too hot. I slept a full twelve hours, interrupted by very frequent bathroom breaks. Lucky mine is attached to my bedroom. Each time I had a drink after, but they ran through in a mere couple hours. The dog kept me company, though I did rouse once enough to take her out to use the back yard. Fair is fair, eh?

Certainty:

Once I woke up for a while in the morning, I dug out the covid test kit. I hadn't had such an awful night for decades. Better know what I'm dealing with. I've watched two of them being used, one by each son when he wasn't feeling well. Both were negative. Both waited the full 15  minutes to be sure there wasn't the second stripe that indicated positive. When I looked at mine after three minutes, it already had two very definite stripes. Still has them days later. Once Steve woke up I informed him of the test and that I was going to the ER for the latest antiviral: Paxlovid.

When I walked up to the check-in window, and was asked what brought me in, I held the test strip up to the window and suggested this said it all. It did. While waiting to be seen, two things surprised me. One, the scarcity of masks being worn. Second, an impatient person being informed that there were in fact no actual rooms to move him to, that they already had people waiting for 24 hours to get in one. What's going on here? More covid peaking again? Sure, it could be anything going on, even just holiday closures of everything else, not just what I was dealing with, but I haven't caught a lick of local news from here for months. Not that anybody is doing much to publish covid numbers these days, so I could only make unfounded assumptions.

Despite how crowded the ER was, I was immediately called back to the triage room. It is nice when they know you are contagious. This is when I first really noticed the brain fog. Ask me a simple question... "Who's your doctor?" ...uh.... Good thing I write a lot of info down. List my symptoms? I would add another to the list of items and another after she was later down her list on the computer. Fortunately, she could back it up and put those in, nodding at their familiarity.

Less than an hour after walking in, I walked out with my new Paxlovid pills, generally only available from hospital pharmacies, a huge stack of paperwork that I'll get around to reading... later, and a warning not to take my statin with them. No biggie there, any time I need to not take something for whatever reason, I just turn the bottle upside down in the medicine cabinet. (Shrugs.) It's a system. I do it with the 5 x a week thyroid pills. Let's not get complicated here while fighting brain fog.

The pills are easy to take. There are two varieties, three pills each time I take them, morning and evening. Every 8:30 that rolls around, as precisely as possible. One card of bubble packaging holds six, or one day's worth. One color of foil is for morning and a different color for evening. Within 20 minutes of the first dose I got this bitter taste all across the roof of my mouth. Never tasted with the roof of your mouth? Me neither, not that I even noticed. This is unavoidable. Only something else in my mouth can cover it up, briefly. I tuck a sugarless cherry cough drop in one cheek, replace it when it's gone, or remove it to eat. So far it's the only downside of the pills, though I was warned about one of the two kinds causing the runs. I guess you have to eat something in order to fall prey to that though.

There hasn't been an appetite. I've not felt actually hungry. I eat due to pattern mostly, with my ability to taste only fading more slowly than smell.  I can have a bit of something for breakfast, then realize around 2 or 3 PM that there's been nothing since. This despite having that crate of fresh Palisade peaches in the fridge, waiting for attention, reminding us we drooled over the very idea of them on our trip down. They are first choice when I'm prepared to eat. There's no way I'm ignoring them. The freezer is full of things totally ignored. Before symptoms appeared Steve & I hit the grocery store for a huge back-home-to-an-empty-larder trip. Masked, of course, because we do. I planned for the peaches by getting a lot of Greek yogurt in honey vanilla flavor, Steve by getting vanilla ice cream. I can almost taste enough of the peaches to not feel totally deprived and pissed off at the timing. Between the fever and low intake, the scale shows me down 5 pounds from our arrival home.

No, I don't recommend covid as a diet plan. I do wonder however what my weight will be once it's over.   :  )

Questions:

I keep wondering how I was exposed to this. I googled how long from exposure to symptoms, and answers seem to vary from three days to two weeks. It's puzzling since there were so few contacts with other people the whole trip. A quick potty break accidentally without a mask and not really meeting anybody? That man who shared the elevator to our room in Nebraska? Some contact before we left Minnesota, even at the bonfire despite being outside and fairly well distanced? Motel check-in clerks were my longest contacts but I always popped a mask on for those.

Then, since I could be contagious for three days before symptoms, who might I have unknowingly shared it with? Steve of course, though he still denies any symptoms and has tested negative... once. But we shared a compact car, unmasked. More distance in the motel rooms, but still not safe enough in the same room that now we know I have it, so we stay masked around each other. He and I both called everybody we actually know I came into contact with, from MN till symptoms showed. My granddaughter informed me not to worry, they all "had the ick". She and the kids are at day care 5 days a week so that could mean whatever the latest head cold combinations of the week were. I warned her to be aware of possibilities.

The questions I'm trying not to ask are the ones about how bad this could be despite Paxlovid, whether there will be long covid effects, how much brain fog can there be? And how do I take care of Steve if/when he gets it? How can he not?

Day to Day:

Everybody's asks how I feel. The first night was worst with the fever. I since was told at the ER to take aspirin or whatever to keep that down, so I do at least twice a day, keeping comfy the rest of the time by getting my PJ top wet and letting it evaporate, spending all my time in one of the rooms with the ceiling fan going. Otherwise, it's the worst cold I've ever had - or at least can remember. Every other cold as an adult has meant dosing myself with all the OTC symptom reducers, and I've gone right back to work. Now I rely on the Paxlovid. Also on being as inactive as possible, including being in the same set of pj's since that first night's fever.

It has evolved a bit in several days. The exhaustion has been easing up, but there is still little energy. One day's accomplishment was hanging up the clothes on the bed. Next day's was... oh wait, I didn't do much of anything else, did I? I did cut my own peaches, though. Wednesday's was driving Steve to the emergency vet with the dog after I set Steve's gummy painkiller with THC where she could snatch them as soon as my back was turned.  (She's in much better shape than my pocketbook, thanks for asking.)  I do take care of my very basic needs, but haven't showered since we came home to a clogged drain, and nobody has poured the stuff in it yet. We have the harsh chemical stuff but want to hit the store for the biological stuff. Who smells anything? I tried and when I can't smell my own stink, the sniffer is dead. Y'all are gonna stay away anyway, right?

The nose started dripping even before anything else, but I just knocked it off to my allergies in this different location kicking back in.  That was Saturday but by Monday the nose was a steady stream, so bad I just tucked a series of tissues under my face mask. Now it's just down to lots of honking and blowing, even now decreasing rapidly. The cough is still there as well, mostly mornings now.

The voice got more gravelly, the throat a bit sore by Tuesday, more sore Wednesday, so I try to avoid long phone conversations. Anything conversations. Unfortunately that isn't altogether possible, both from good friends reaching out, though they understood keeping it short, but then the gas company's snafu raised its ugly head again. I'd asked to cancel the "turn-back-on" visit scheduled for Wednesday, since they'd never turned it off in the first place.  An email reminder of the visit alerted me to the issue, and thus began another hassle. Fortunately, 7/8 of that all became her putting me on hold while she went and consulted with other employees. For a long time she insisted they had to come anyway, and inspect all our gas appliances. I finally gave in reluctantly, but said it needed to be postponed due to my having covid.  She asked when I'd be over it so they could reschedule?  What? Am I God who can tell these things? I pointed out that there are two others in the house who may catch it from me despite precautions, perhaps sequentially, spreading out the time even more. She went away again, returned with a proposed date. I accepted reluctantly, then reminded her I might have to call and postpone further. Again she went away, finally returning with the novel idea that since we were an "open" account since the gas hadn't ever gotten turned off and there was an outstanding bill being disputed, they actually didn't have to come out after all! 

Gimme another three cough drops please. I'm celebrating an accomplishment with a less awful tasting mouth.

Sleep has been the big thing, at least so far. I'm up for a few hours and then it's bedtime again. Sleep comes quickly, and I can even get up for the bathroom and drop right back off. The dog has been patient with me for not taking her out to pee every time I get to go. Her care is all my job right now. Steve is walking as little as possible with his hips now acting up, and the maze between kitchen and patio door is as bad as it's ever been. 

Other complications:

One thing I came home to was a postcard informing me I had to respond right away by taking a survey to see if I qualified for Jury Duty. The projected date is late in October, so I hope to be well past this, including the brain fog by then. Especially the brain fog. I had to go online to register, and the first thing was my ID number. Huh? What ID number? I looked the card over, front and back, not finding one other than an explanation of where to enter it in the online front page and that it needed 9 numbers.  Did they mean the same as my voter ID number, since registering to vote puts me eligible for jury duty? Or my SS? The website offered a chat feature, but it was already Labor Day weekend. I tucked the card in a prominent spot for later attention. Tuesday I looked at the card again, all over, still found no number, went online, found a phone number, and got to listen to a recording which, after 3 minutes, mentioned in passing that the ID number was in the lower left corner of the postcard. Yep. Sure was.  Such a treat, feeling completely stupid, isn't it? Hitting you when you've got covid is a bit below the belt though, doncha think? But I completed their survey, doing my best under the circumstances. One question bothers me, and there was no chance on the form for explanations. How long have I lived here? Is it ten years from when we bought the house and I spent two months here, and barely more the next year? Or is it 8 years from when I retired and we began spending our 9 months here as legal residents? Perjury is involved, after all. I guess if they ask I can explain.

Rich is another complication, well beyond the mess we returned to. Yesterday afternoon he woke me with the sound of vomiting in the bathroom. Extensive vomiting. I gathered myself together, went out to his area to see what was going on, and found him flat on the floor,  clenching himself trying not to move a muscle, in agony over each tiniest move. He was also talking to himself rapid-fire, coaching himself not to move because it hurt too much, trying to figure out why everything hurt except that his hands had no feeling whatsoever. I needed to call 911 and get an ambulance to take him to the hospital. I just needed him to get off the floor and into the living room where the responders could have access to him and get him out of the house first. He had just been mobile.

I knew I couldn't take him with my covid. Steve couldn't drive with his medications. I also knew Rich'd had a recurrence of MRSA just before we arrived but was trying to ignore it because he was trying to get the house together. He had also been unknowingly exposed to my covid by then. I passed that info on the the 911 operator so the squad which showed up did so masked and gloved. They were to consider him positive for both. In their interview of him, it also came out that he'd fallen asleep outside the night before and spent the night in high temperatures. Add likely dehydration to his list, which he'd actually tried himself to remedy by drinking lots of water once he woke up. Hence the vomiting I heard. By the time all the questions had been asked and various vitals taken, the ambulance rolled up and off he went, asking me to bring him shoes when I came to pick him up.

Hmmm, me pick him up? With covid? More, I'd looked for his shoes and not found any. A different issue for a different day, obviously. And now solved already by a friend of his.

I'd talked to him a bit after we'd just gotten home and he'd mentioned that he was one of the very rare people who had their MRSA travel to the inside of a bone and lodge there, plotting. I know plenty of people who get MRSA over and over and it is presumed it's hiding out somewhere in their bodies. However, last time in the hospital for him this last summer, he was informed that of the few people with his condition, less a third live past ten years with it. 

He's obviously very encouraged by that. /s

I checked in with him this morning and his main issue was they weren't feeding him properly. He wanted to get OUT! Ironic, since he doesn't feed himself properly either. When he came in his white blood cell count was 20,000. This morning, on continuous IV antibiotics, it had changed, but by going up to 33,000! Note that 11,000 is the top of the range for what is considered normal. He says once they can figure out which antibiotic works, he can come home on pills. Since he is known at this hospital for previous MRSA, you'd think they would hit him with their best stuff right away. Or have they already done that?