Earlier this week, I mentioned in a thread that I was sick with COVID like symptoms. With so much COVID stuff going around, I wanted to share my experience, both as an update, as friends on and off the forum have been reaching out, and so others might know about my symptoms and experience. Obviously, different folks have different experiences with COVID, and as a threshold matter, I can’t even confirm if what I had was COVID, because despite my desire to be tested, I was unable to, because of a lack of testing capability in the system.
By way of background, I am a youngish 61 year old male. I weigh 167 pounds, have no health issues behind wishing I could scoot faster in USPSA and pull the trigger a little bit faster. To satisfy our bird dog, my wife and I hike well over 60 minutes a day. It has been nearly three years since I can remember being sick at all. I get a flu shot and generally practice social distancing as normal behavior.
Over the last few weeks, my wife and I have felt like we were “fighting something.” Some afternoons, we felt wiped by 3 pm. Normally I talk on the phone hiking up hills, and that caused just a tiny bit of shortness of breath — meaning I could hike up the hill fine, or talk on the phone, but not both at the same time. I also have had a very intermittent but unusual dry cough and sensation in the back of my throat.
Last Monday, on our morning hike, my wife was feeling fatigued, and I had to keep waiting for her on hills. That is unusual, as she is always great on hills, and over the years has raced mountain bikes and been an aerobic phenom. I was kind of worried about her, because of her and because what one of us gets the other usually does. Monday afternoon I was tired. Monday night my wife made a great dinner, and part way through I felt nauseous. I took some tums, and laid down for five minutes at 7:00 pm, which is very unusual for me. When I woke up, I felt very uncomfortable. I can’t point to a specific symptom, but just really crappy.
At 1am Tuesday morning, I woke up by regurgitating all this acid reflux into my mouth. This was very odd. I took some tums, and checked my temperature, and it was normal. Tuesday around 6am, I felt cold and had body aches. I took my temperature and it was 101.5. Later in the morning, I realized that I had lost my ability to smell. As an example, New Skin is so pungent, our dog usually goes running away from it, and when I uncapped a bottle of it, and placed it against my nostrils, I could not smell it. Tuesday afternoon I called my regular doctor’s office, and they had a COVID specialist that did a phone screening with me. It took about fifteen minutes, and she told me I was likely COVID positive, based on multiple symptoms, and how events had unfolded. She also said testing was being reserved for very ill people, where the test was to confirm COVID as a way of ruling out something else more serious. She told me to stay at home, since I had no underlying health issues, and only seek medical care if I had one or more of these three things — a high fever uncontrollable by Tylenol, significant shortness of breath, or I felt very light headed/out of it. She said I could be considered good to resume normal activities after the longer of, seven days from the onset of symptoms, or 72 hours after having no more symptoms.
My fever continued all Tuesday, and I felt body aches, general fatigue with little appetite. I basically hydrated and stayed in bed. On Wednesday, my fever went down in the morning to about 100.5, and in the afternoon to about 99.5. I kept drinking a lot of fluids, and I had a small amount of appetite. I still didn’t have the energy to get out of bed except to go to the bathroom.
Thursday morning, I woke up feeling much better, and had no fever. I was able to take a shower, and noted that I was down to 162 pounds, meaning I had lost five pounds in those few days. Finally I did something faster than Duke. I spent the whole day in bed resting. No fever all day.
Friday morning I woke up feeling even better, no fever, and my appetite was fully back. When I tried to do a small task like move the holster from one CR Speed belt to another, I was tired. Zero interest in dry firing or anything vigorous. My smell was almost back to normal.
Saturday morning, I woke up and felt even better. As a test, I went for a 30 minute hike in the desert with my wife and dog, and felt pretty good. I dry fired yesterday afternoon and started to feel inpatient about getting back going. Sense of smell back to normal.
Sunday morning, today, I woke up feeling very rested and over whatever I had. Up to 163 pounds and feeling darn hungry. The 14 hours between last and first meal program is going on suspense for a while.
I am going to call it good on Monday, which is seven days from onset. I really hope that anti-body test is available soon, as I would love to confirm that I have been exposed to COVID and have some immunity. I recognize the testing is still in flux and the duration of any immunity is still TBD. My wife has not developed a fever or any obvious symptom besides being a little tired. This is not to suggest my experience is typical, but I wanted to report how it went for me.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Nephrology
