My Personal Experience of #Covid19 (thus far)

Five days ago I tested positive for Covid. Here’s a bit of what the story has been like so far

Tuesday was spent moving on of the offspring out of their rental property in country Vic and back down to Melbourne’s suburbs. A hot day of heavy lifting and a fair bit of driving.

By latish Tuesday I was feeling a bit under the weather. Initially I put that down to likely dehydration having played cricket on the Saturday (which was also probably why my throat was a bit sore) and a bit of activity on the Sunday and the cricket training session just had, starting to catch up with me. I’d been drinking plenty and just added more volume. The headache progressively got worse not helped by a really hot night making for a less than ideal sleep.

Wednesday took the dog for a walk early to beat the anticipated heat. Only a short one, half an hour or so of tossing a ball to her but me not covering much ground. Sore throat persisting. Tried to log in for work at about 8am or so and couldn’t get access for some reason (more on that later). Felt pretty tired, put my head back down for a bit and woke up just before 11am! 3 hours vanished. Headache really ponding now and body starting to get the flu like shivers. ‘oh what?! noooo’ I thought to myself. Tried to log in again – still couldn’t get access to work. Feeling ridiculously tired, still drinking plenty I was aware enough to think that might be a need for a test. Started making calls to see if I could secure a RAT from anywhere. None available and now at about 12 I was really tired again. Put the head back down at woke up around two.

As someone who wakes up without an alarm clock pretty much 6.15am every morning, having had about five hours of sleep extra during the day is unheard of. The teens helped me secure a RAT and about 3pm it took less than 45 seconds of the stated ’15 minutes’ for it to tell me I was positive for Covid. Teens not happy as now they’re in lockdown and I’m worried about infecting them too. log on to DHHS website to self report and got a ping back from Alfred HealthImmediately call the cricket club to let them know so they can advise team mates and our opposition from Saturday, and the club where I help coach as we’d had a training session on the Tuesday. Start thinking backwards about how and where given I’d had just two people contact events in the past 10 days anad everyone reportedly healthy, and that I’d masked up for all the very short stints at getting groceries.

A thought – all of the product handling that checkout staff do at the grocery aisle – is that a way to spread covid through contact?

Overnight on the Wednesday any time I got up (about every hour or so) going outside to cool down was interesting. My skin was hyper sensitive and the slight change of temperature booted up the shivers and shakes. Nurofen was I think helping the headache and the sore throat persisted.

Thursday. Feeling a little better in the morning but noticed a rather odd phenomena during the day. Despite the heat outside and despite how physically hot I felt, I was not sweating. Fluid intake was high, urine output as expected but not a single bead of perspiration. Made it rather difficult to cool down. Ridiclously tired.Had more stints of multi hour sleep breaks. First signs of a cough begin just prior to bed,

Friday. Muscle soreness has eased and headache mostly gone but now a cough has emerged and I’m feeling a little breathy. Contact work to find out what’s ging on with access. My password is corrent.But in between knowing it and typing it I couldn’t get it right on the keyboard! Mental fog. Still tired but today just one middle of the day sleep – three hours from a little after 10am. Both teens have had a pcr and get their results back – negative but I’m not convinced that will hold up. Son is feeing poorly and we’d spent a day together on that Tuesday driving around. He’s gonna have it for sure.

Saturday. am in the middle of packing up the house for a pending move. Have lost the previous days so thought I’d do some simple boxing up work. Little movement, nothing too heavy and yet needing to stop every few minutes to catch my breath. I’m packing up the shed in the backyard and shuffling each box towards the front of the house. I do that for about two hours all up with a number of sit down stints. The cough comes and goes, more irritating than annoying. Inside I’m in a separate room of the house and have set up a shower under the hose in the front yard. Daughter has taken over the outside office pod as is staying well away. Can’t blame her – she’s off the Gold Coast in a fortnight if eveything goes well!

Sunday (today). Cough coming and going, headache has come back and muscle soreness now replaced with everything just feeling tired. Definitiely finding it harder to breathe. Sitting on the couch watching TV is hard. I’m tired and there have been times where I’ve dozed off. Worryingly a shot of adrenalin is waking me up consistently – I’ve developed apnea, something that used to affect me when sleeping. This might be a tough night

Notes:
I’m double vaccinated (AZ) with 2nd dose in early September 2020.
Relatively fit, mid 50s fairly active, non smoker
Was planning on having my booster after moving the teen out of the country residence. Covid beat me
Alfred Health have been monitoring progress by both survey app and follow up calls
I’m in a better position than many with food available and some space to move.
This is not fun. It’s hitting harder and longer than ‘man-flu’

The teen son tested positive this mornin