My Covid Experience
Yup. It happened. I got Covid. After nearly two years of managing to avoid it, I tested positive at the beginning of this month. I am fully vaccinated, spend 95% of my time in my home, and wear masks whenever I am in public. I caught the Rona from someone in my household who was not wearing a mask whenever they were in public.
My personal experience with having Covid was mild (thanks Pfizer!). I at first tested negative, only to test positive a few days later. My biggest advice is to get tested twice if you can if you get a negative rapid test. I was actually scheduled to get my booster the weekend I tested positive. I am prone to sinus infections and it essentially felt like a bad sinus infection. I lost my sense of taste and smell for two days. Which was the most terrifying aspect of it. I had heard and read horror stories of people losing their sense of taste and smell for months or some never recovering it at all. I spent so much time sticking my nose in perfume bottles and scented candles trying to smell something to avail. My sense of taste was more mysterious - I could taste but I couldn’t taste. I could differentiate between sweet, salty, and spicy. But I could not tell you anything about the specific foods I was eating. For example; I made scrambled eggs with hot sauce for breakfast. I could “taste” the spiciness of the hot sauce. But couldn’t taste the eggs at all. Additionally, I dealt with a mild fever that swung between 98-100 degrees.
Another symptom was sore eyes - which is what made me suspect that it was Covid in the first place. When I received my second vaccine dose the only major side effect I had was sore eyes (think about how your eyes feel if you have an eye infection - it felt like that). This also cleared up after about two days. Fatigue was the major side effect and it’s something I’m still dealing with somewhat 2 weeks out of quarantine. I slept a ton when I was sick and I still find myself having days where I feel more rundown than usual.
Overall, my Covid experience was far better than it would have been had I not been vaccinated. Would I have preferred to not have gotten it at all? Hell, yes. But the outcome was the best it could have been. I was originally not going to talk about it at all. mostly because I felt really upset that I had managed to avoid it for so long only to catch it because someone else wasn’t being smart and safe. I was angry about that. REALLY angry. What I experienced was a microcosm of what this pandemic has truly brought into focus: that often people are selfish and only think about how things directly affect them. This month has felt like a repeat of the first few weeks of the pandemic. I have been disappointed (but not surprised) again and again to watch those who refuse to mask or get vaccinated speak ad nauseum about THEIR rights. While giving a giant middle finger to those who are elderly and the immunocompromised. A giant middle finger to my mother who has pre-existing health issues and a giant middle finger to children who aren’t eligible to be vaccinated.
The last few months of 2021 have been strange and hard and catching Covid very munch encapsulated that for me. But I’m okay. And I’m grateful for that. So many others have not been. So many have lost loved ones and entire families have been decimated by this pandemic. I count myself very blessed.
Please let us know in the comments what your experience with Covid has been.
