Part 3 - "The Gift"

Sometimes, it can be hard to think of a life changing circumstance as a "gift"…

But if you can learn from it and improve as a person - then it has served its purpose.

It is time to share my experience to help others.

I had my reasons and hid this, but no longer.

I has made me who I am.

I am a Covid survivor.

What I have written is what it is like to live with and after, Covid.

On December 24, I had this incredible back pain. I thought I was about to pass a kidney stone. I could not find a comfortable position no matter how I sat or reclined. Advil took the edge off, but never took the pain away. Christmas Day it got worse. For the first time since I can remember, we did not have our traditional Chinese Food on Christmas. I felt too horrible to attempt to drive anywhere, and we attempted to get delivery instead but many others had our idea and our normal place was overloaded and shut down to new orders. It was the beginning of just letting things go and accepting things were happening (or not happening) as they were meant or needed to.

In the following days, this pain got some better, then worse again. I didn’t have a fever, and only a slight cough which then disappeared. 5 days after the pain started, I decided I should rule out Covid.  I tested and expected to be negative and then my plan was to go back to the urologist for his advice. I was shocked beyond belief, devastated really, to get a positive result via email the next morning around 430a. I had heard "muscle aches" as a covid symptom but never "it will feel like you have a kidney stone". After talking to others and comparing experiences, Covid appears to prey on your weak points.

We had been isolating since Christmas Day anyhow, but after I tested, we both completely isolated. Groceries got delivered instead of us picking them up. I felt significantly better around Days 7 and 8 and then experienced what many called the Week 2 Drop. Although I never developed a fever, I ended up with what felt like a resulting sinus infection. I felt awful. Nights were worse for coughing and trying to convince my brain to sleep sitting up or on my stomach, which was better for my lungs. I constantly monitored my temperature and my pulse ox. The scary days were the ones I felt tightness in my chest at times, like I was having an asthma attack, but I got an emergency inhaler (I was in touch with my primary care dr throughout) and my pulse ox (again, to this point) never consistently dropped below where it should be. Thanks to others who posted their experience before me, I had a guidebook of sorts so I knew what kind of medicine and vitamins to take, and when to consider needing to go to the hospital. 

We had the pulse ox and most of the medicine and Vitamins already. Some I ordered after I got sick that I heard about from others as we compared experiences. Being a planner, I was prepared in case either of us got it. I found when I coughed up the gunk - I felt much better. When I finally got an antibiotic around Day 17, I still coughed, but began feeling much better.

Having been terrified about breathing makes everything else seem just trivial in comparison.

Because it really is.. This has really changed me and my perspective on life, because I faced the possibility of staring at struggling to breathe, or even worse, resulting death.  A bad or challenging day is a temporary event.  A bad breathing episode is terrifying and really does a mental number on you.

As I said, I experienced the cough, the nasal stuffiness (which wasn't new as my allergies had been acting up the past few months), the severe chest congestion and the severe exhaustion during the 1^st week when I just laid on the couch or slept. I was lucky in that my worst days were days I was already off work. I lost my sense of taste and smell off and on..The strange part was even when that happened I could still tell the sense (spicy, salty, sweet, bitter) even if I couldn't actually taste the exact flavor. I found I was craving spicy foods (like green chile enchiladas) because that was the easiest for me to taste “something”

While this seems to really bother some, and while my breathing episodes were minor and short lived in the long run – I decided as long as I stayed out of the ER, I could care less about not tasting anything.   My perspective is, as long as I am not in the ER on a respirator, I am ahead of the game. There are so many worse things than just losing your taste and smell.

Priorities.

When I was tested, I expected to be negative and I felt blindsided by the result in my email. I was devastated. But nothing was going to change the fact I was positive and the only thing I could change was how I was going to react to it. So I did. 

Life is what you make of it. I chose to learn from this.

No matter how near or far Covid has come to affecting each of us...it has become a life changing set of moments for me, and for many others who have gone through it.

It reset my priorities, reset what I spent my time worrying over.

It restored a balance I was so desperately seeking at the end of last year.

I had so much out of my control that I had kept focusing on. So much I could not do anything about or change. As I’ve written before, I was in a meltdown.

I was stressed about things at work, I was upset because I couldn’t go away like I typically do most weekends in December. I was upset that my even multiple backup plans couldn’t happen, as it wasn’t safe to travel. I was afraid of getting Covid, or of my Mom getting it. I was upset about some things involving my Mom – again, all stuff I couldn’t control.

I needed a reboot.

Covid was my reboot. Getting Covid, was one of the best things to happen to me. It reset my priorities and what I was spending time worrying and obsessing over. I don’t regret getting it. I feared ending up in the ER and losing my life due to an inability to breath. Luckily, that has not been my experience, but it did divide my life with another line in the sand of before and after, just as my Father's death did.  Covid did for me what cancer did for him.

Covid is a series of ups and downs. Mentally and Emotionally. Physically. For a while, it was taking 2 steps forward and 1 step back. You have a day you feel you are improving and then you feel bad again. Frustrating. Around Day 20, I hit the breaking point of what I could deal with and broke down. It was a stepping stone, though, not a destination. Another great Covid lesson. Day 21, I picked myself up and continued the positive mental attitude and remaining hopeful, even as I struggled some more days after that. The 20 day mark and the month mark were hard mental checkpoints for me.

Around the 2 week mark, After an xray to make sure I didn’t have pneumonia, I finally got the Doctor to give me an Antibiotic. I called this Level 2 of feeling better – I felt significantly better within 3 days of taking it, but then I seemed to plateau – I remained at “Level 2” but still couldn’t get rid of the remaining cough and went on a steroid about a week or so after the antibiotic finished, which did the trick. The important thing to note, and that I realized – you can’t treat Covid, but you can definitely treat its symptoms.

I felt the antibiotic took me to Level 2 of feeling better and the steroid took me to Level 3.

Side effect of the Steroid:  Made me feel I was taking Happy Pills!

Between adrenaline, happy pills, and my mental frame of mind..those pills were THE SHIT!

I was “High on life, Honey, High on Life” lol

That’s how I recognized that little changes can make huge differences in how you feel.

 What I became thankful for as a result of Covid:

1..Ordering groceries and dinner via an app on a phone or website to get delivered. What if this had been 1990 instead of 2020, this would not have possible. What would we have done…

2..You really can't trust that anyone else will do the right thing. We masked, we washed hands, we sanitized...and although I suspect where I may have picked it up - I will never know for sure. I leave Covid a much different person as a result. One example: I was careful before, but now, every piece of clothing that leaves this house goes into the laundry basket when I return. No more using jackets or jeans a few times before washing, at least for now. Technically, my isolation ended 10 days after my 1^st symptom,  but I remained isolated for about a month as I did not feel well enough. Its now 54 days since this started, and I am still not very comfortable being in close proximity around any person other than my Mother. The first few times I walked after I started improving, I panicked when someone got too close to me.

3..I have been glad throughout my Father never had to deal with this, but now I am thrilled since I tested positive. I would have been destroyed even more if I had passed it to him.  My Mother has the immune system of a warrior compared to me. We’re not sure who had it first or if she managed to skip it despite living in such close quarters - and just had a cold – she did not have any of the typical symptoms I experienced.  She was coughing first and recovered first from whatever she had – well before I did. What a miracle, regardless.

4..Despite everything I've endured over the past few month+, I am still thankful for a relatively minor case. I was able to manage this without missing work. Working from home fulltime made this possible. I’m glad I was not going into an office building!

 5..Resetting my priorities including finally giving up my beloved Coke Zero. My last one was on Christmas Eve, and I gave it up as I felt with a possible kidney issue (at the time) - I did not need any soda in my system. It obviously did not end up being a kidney stone, but I am much better for it anyhow.

Overall, It was like I got this wash of wisdom and strength from only a few short hours after my positive result after I got upset. I picked myself up and decided I couldn’t change the cards I was dealt, only how I dealt with them.  I finally was able to implement a lot of what I wanted to, over the past few months, in what seemed to be a matter of hours. As I stated above, a covid diagnosis for me did what cancer did for my Father. He learned, grew and implemented from his diagnosis. So did I.

As time went on, as I continued to battle, taking two steps forward and one step back, I gained even more respect for how he must have felt to have something foreign in his body attacking him.  The month mark of being sick was mentally tough for me. I was sick of being sick and though at no point did I really say “Why Me” I did observe some feelings of “I was careful and still this happened…” Covid does not discriminate. 

Anyhow, the month mark was hard. I thought how much more of this can I take. I was tired of coughing and of feeling chest tightness, which seemed to occur around the same time each afternoon/evening.  I decided my lungs must have been getting tired of working harder after a certain number of hours. I was tired of being sick.  The coughing made my chest tight. The chest tightness made me panic and threw me into anxiety attacks, thinking about needing to go to the hospital. The anxiety made me cough, so I couldn’t heal. Some nights, I went to bed with that tightness, praying it would be OK in the morning. It was a vicious cycle.

When they took Dad off the Chemo, it mentally did a number on him.  He felt he wasn’t doing anything to “attack the bastard” (his words) and I remember trying to convince him that his body probably needed a break. I know to him, that didn’t matter and it wasn’t enough.

After I finished the antibiotics, the random cough a few times a day and the chest tightness were the only symptoms that remained. Even though I had improved significantly from the first two weeks, it felt like I just couldn’t get out of this vicious cycle of coughing and anxiety. Covid is a back and forth dance of symptoms.  Without an antibiotic (I had finished the course) and with Mucinex not working at all after 4 weeks, I finally understood and related to what my Father must have felt back then. That’s where the steroid came in and saved the day for me. It took the last part of Covid away for me and got me to the point I now feel healed.

As I write this, it is now 54 days since my 1st symptoms started. Although I’m not counting or paying attention to how many days since this started any longer. I don’t need to, because I have recovered.

To me, it is currently Day 18 of NO symptoms. Nearly 3 weeks without the majority of the symptoms. I am through the worst.  No more coughing, no more breathing episodes, I feel better than I did pre-Covid, for the most part. Some residual exhaustion at times, and what is called the Covid Brain Fog. I forget that I have mentioned something in a previous conversation and repeat it as if I never mentioned it. The scars of covid remain – a new day of exhaustion after plenty of energy, a new tickle in the throat or just not feeling 100% - the anxiety is triggered and makes me want to panic after what I’ve been through. In some ways, just not as frequently, I still experience the Covid back and forth dance. I refer to it as my fancy Covid anxiety.

I recently re-tested and ironically – I am thrilled that I am now positive, but this time for Covid antibodies, which means I am done with the active virus and my body has what it needs to fight it.   I soon hope to resume donating plasma to other Covid patients who can benefit from it, too.

The past month+ changed my perspective on life.

I finally see what Dad tried to tell me and impart for years:

“Don’t worry about the small shit, and it’s all small shit”