rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

as far as i know stet and i have it. anyone else?

Saturday 28 March
During the day i started feeling that classic tingly 'emergency' feeling that accompanies pretty much any fever. i had a scheduled aperatif/hangout at 7:15 with my wife's family, about a dozen of them shouting over the top of each other for an hour. my wife also said she didn't feel good, so we PRETENDED to drink by pouring some kombucha into wine glasses. it wasn't so bad.

by the time i was ready for bed i had a proper fever - 38.3C (101F). that night was terrible. classic delirium dreams. i was one of many little bundles or hashmarks that needed to be grouped and lined up inside a large pen somewhere in westminster. it was my job to do the grouping and lining up, and i was also one of the hashmarks. i tried every combination. it never was right. i woke up maybe 4 times and always returned to this same anxiety dream. my body ached. it was hard to get back to sleep.

Sunday 29 March
toast was bitter. coffee was horrible. i started coughing. not a lot, and it never felt violent, but it was there. i ached all over. in the afternoon i slept, which was massively helpful. after that i even started to feel okay.

my wife having similar symptoms to me, but milder. little or no fever, and less aches.

i went for a walk (allowed under NHS guidelines) keeping well away from everyone and feeling like the angel of death. as i walked i could smell something. it was persistent. extremely recognisable yet very unusual. i could smell it wherever i went. once i got back home i could still smell it. i finally figured it out. burning hair. since then i haven't smelled it.

another symptom began: little pain flashes at the base of my skull lasting for no more than a second or two. right side, left side, at random. no trouble breathing. but chest feeling tight and a bit... hollowed out sort of. there is some serious shit happening in there. prefer not to know.

whole family watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which was WAY more trash than i had remembered. still kinda fun.

i started to feel even better. by this time i'd started taking paracetemol right up to the max dosage each day (2x 500mg tablets three times a day) and kind of trying to game it so that it would take effect at the ideal time but not put me over my limit. felt better going to bed.

Monday 30 March
night absolutely awful. worst yet. woke up needing to pee and couldn't go back to sleep for maybe 2 hrs because of the aches. finally realising i was being an idiot and should just take some paracetemol. did so, got to sleep in 10 minutes. some untold time later wake up absolutely DRENCHED. hanes beefy T just wet through. changes clothes.

realise there is an eerie resemblance between how i feel in the mornings and how i might feel after an almighty speed bender. metallic taste in mouth, insides feel totally used up and squeezed out, flashes of pain in head. strong urges to pee that result in very little.

actually take a shower and change into real clothes to try to feel more normal. it kind of works! and guess what - it's a homeschool day!

somehow my wife and i manage my kids through a few online classes, set them up with some videogames and lunch, are incredibly irritable towards each other and the kids. after the kids are in bed we have a big talk and apologise to each other.

Tuesday 31 March
new night strategy: keep two paracetemol by the bed and take as soon as i wake up in the middle of the night. IT WORKS. more or less. i basically sleep through. rise at 8:30 feeling like shit but at least i slept.

the first of several grocery drop-offs arrives courtesy of a neighbourhood friend. the lovely Emma B feels significantly worse and i'm about the same. we're basically holding steady. no shortness of breath is what i'm holding onto.

it turns out one of my bosses at work had it right before we were all told to work from home and it took him 15 days to come out of it. he urged me in a text message to completely disconnect from work for at least 3-4 days and get better. that's what i'm doing.

as i'm writing this my kids are playing PS4 and my wife is in bed.

i fully intend for this to be as bad as it gets. i'm not drinking alcohol at all. i'm having like a half a cup of coffee a day (as opposed to my usual 3-4). it tastes nasty now anyway. drinking lots of water. getting to bed around 11pm.

whole family watched Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol which was WAY more trash than i had remembered.

(get well soon stet and tracer obv)

Seconded.

(Big Star's) Thirded

Sounds horrible TH, hope that’s as bad as it gets & you both get better soon.

the most amazing part, which i had completely forgotten, goes something like this:

cruise: 'you're an analyst?'

renner: 'that's right'

cruise: 'pen'

renner: 'excuse me?'

cruise, more pettily: 'give me a pen!'

renner gives cruise a ballpoint pen. cruise then starts drawing on his own palm with the pen. as he's drawing, he's talking. cruise: 'if you're such a hot shot analyst, i'm looking for a european male, mid-50s, blue eyes, looks like this' and then cruise HOLDS UP HIS PALM to show him the BALLPOINT SKETCH and renner says...

'well.. it's crude sketch, but it could be...' and pinpoints the exact dude, rattling off the guy's postdoctoral degrees

xpost lol thanks all

feel better tracer! and stet!

yes but had you any criticisms of this perfect movie or were you just going to detail its awesomeness

I didn't think I had seen this movie but now that you described the scene, I have totally seen it.

Get well!

Good luck Tracer! Judging by your post it sounds like your kids are just bowling through this without any ill-effects at all, which I guess is both a blessing and a curse right now?

Good luck & get well soon, Tracer & stet & families and any other ilxors with bugs to report!

and thanks for the symptoms diary, it's interesting to have an idea what to expect (or not)...

take care TH (and stet, and yr respective households), good to hear you've been able to function on some level during the day

Matt: bingo

tbh the thing i’m almost dreading more than contracting the ‘rona is trying to look after a 21-month-old while feeling like hammered shit for a week or more

Get well, this is riveting 'rona-blogging

from what i understand stet is much further along in this. would be interesting to see to what extent our experiences line up.

Ilxor stevie had it too iirc, but I think he's out the other side now

!!! i did not know

Get well sooon, tracer.

Very best wishes to both of you.

i hope you all get well soon xx

the most alarming symptom i’ve heard about so far tbh

― a struggle to make meat-snacking fit (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, March 31, 2020 8:17 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well loss of taste is a common symptom

roasted

lol

a+

I mention this just to cheer you up, Tracer Hand (hoping you find humour in such things): I was going to post on that first-ILX-mention thread, so I looked up "coronavirus," and, well, I'm sure you can guess the rest.

rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

Huh? Wrong link.

'Professor Wickramasinghe admits there is no hard evidence for his theory; and researchers who have been working on Sars reacted with a mixture of disbelief and ridicule.
There is nothing strange about the Sars coronavirus, they said; it certainly evolved from other known viruses.

One leading expert said Professor Wickramasinghe's letter "must be a joke"; another said it is simply ridiculous.'

surely it is the Professor's name that is the joke here?!@@

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, May 23, 2003 11:59 AM (sixteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

http://www.asiantribune.com/files/images/Chandra1%20-%20Chandra%20Wickramasinghe_0.jpg

Wow!

I am ashamed of making fun of what at this remove I now consider a rather brilliant, grand and gnarly name. :/

Also if that be he, he is clearly A Dude

And he is claiming extraterrestrial origins of coronaviruses to this day.

Unfortunate joke. I was reminded of how, 25-30 years ago, when my friends and I came across someone with an unwieldy name we would exclaim "Gesundheit!" As kids this just seemed silly, but now I have to wonder if it ever came across as racist.

pigs! in! space!

Wednesday 1 April
Best night yet. I didn’t need my emergency paracetemol.

Two massive naps today. Worryingly, Paul comes down with a 103F fever and sleeps for hours as well.

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation on the teevee with the kids. Goodness me what a movie. The opera scene. The ‘water torus’ scene. The car chase in Morocco. Kidnaping the Prime Minister. The final cat-and-mouse shootout / knife fight among the foggy alleyways of Tower Hill. The delicious conclusion. Best MI hands down imo.

Appetite still good (though still no sense of smell) and breathing still fine.

Thursday 2 April
Rocky night. However Paul has woken up in a great mood, and no fever.

Went for a longish walk today with the lovaly Emma B. Made avologmeno for lunch and was then attacked by a headache the ferocity of which I have probably never felt before in my life. It wasn’t all-encompassing like a migraine but it somehow felt worse - it was sudden, implacable, vice-like, a heavy boot holding me down. Utterly defenseless. Slept three hours in the afternoon and the boot was still there when I woke up.

Managed to rouse myself for dinner, read to the kids before bed.

In some ways this is maybe the worst day so far. Just flattened. Currently watching Pitch Perfect, which is exactly my speed. Head still throbbing. I’ve heard that people can really take a nose-dive in the second week and I hope this isn’t the beginning of that.

fingers crosse tracer, i hadnt seen migraine as a common symptom but i have where possible just been avoiding too much of that reporting tbh

heartened that yr MI taste is back, that is indeed the best of them

Sorry you’re going through this!

Thanks for keeping everyone informed, I'm sure it's a struggle.

best wishes to you both

Best wishes to you both.

<3 <3 <3 <3

<<<<3333

Damn Tracer, hang in there.

,

fuck, tracer. get well soon. and thanks for keeping us updated here - this sort of thing really helpful (and dare i say it interesting)

Get well soon. Hope it does mean you can't get it again at least.

<3 Tracer all the best to you and family. thanks for posting your updates. what fizzles just said.

Hold tight Tracer. Honestly this sounds like a real motherfucker, something especially cruel about the way it seems to trick everyone into thinking they're improving for a bit before finding new and more horrific ways to brutalise them.

following, and wishing both of you the best

Thanks all. Feeling much better today. 8-y-o’s fever came back in the middle of the night. When I went down for my pee he was calling out that he couldn’t go back to sleep. So I calpol’ed him up and today he’s.... fine. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sending love; fight through.

Friday 3 April
Last night decided to watch 'View From The Top' (Paltrow, Ruffalo, 2003). A more hallucinatorily bad movie I may have never seen. Everything is so airless and off about it, it's just bananas.

The Lovely Emma B's sleep anxiety has decided to return, which is unhelpful. Paul's fever came back in the night. Some Calpol took care of it.

For the first time in a long time none of us went outside at all. It just felt like too much.

Something I haven't noted yet, but which has ben a feature of the last week, is a ringing in my ears. It's not overwhelming but it's pretty much always there. I notice it particularly in the mornings. Which throws another log on the fire of the feeling that every day I'm somehow paying for Hunter S Thompson's sins. Head pains, metallic taste, burnt out lungs, just a general charred aspect to life. And ringing ears like I've been to a thrash metal show.

Felt pretty okay today. Didn't take any naps. Like an idiot checked work email and found out I'd been taken off a project "indefinitely" that I'd been looking forward to for a long time, and which is one of the main things motivating me to get back in the saddle. Started boiling inside. Instantly fired off about 4 pissed off texts and was reassured pretty much straight away that no, it's a misunderstanding - I'm still on the project. Sometimes you have to throw a strategic stink. I've been watching Larry Sanders. I know how this shit goes. The second your back is turned the fucking jackals come out.

My sister keeps texting me ancient newspaper clippings of distant ancestors who died of the the Spanish flu. i.e. 'This was your great-uncle Carl'. Thanks?

Another texting buddy warns of a 'spike on day 10' so i guess I've got that to look forward to.

Ordered pizza and watched Major League. Kids and wife all now asleep. The latter will surely wake at some point soon, at which point I am armed with what have become the most precious objects in my household bar none: 2x 500mg paracetemol tablets.

<3

My sister keeps texting me ancient newspaper clippings of distant ancestors who died of the the Spanish flu. i.e. 'This was your great-uncle Carl'. Thanks?

LOL

thank u ulysses

hugs tracer and thx for writing this up :)

thinking of u tracer & the whole hand family
i have avoided reading most firsthand accounts of this scourge aside from this one

Maybe the ringing ears is just coincidental arrival of tinnitus? There's a thread on that. Great choice with Larry Sanders. A show filled mostly with venal characters seems perfect.

I have mild tinnitus which I mostly don't notice unless I think about it, but sometimes when I have a cold it gets a lot worse/harder to ignore, and stays that way for a week or two after all the other symptoms have gone

obv the 'rona is not just a cold, but maybe something similar going on physiologically? not that I know what that is, exactly

thanks for your updates - glad you felt a bit better today and fought for your place on the project! hope you get better soon, and your kid too; it's good that he's mostly not been too bothered by symptoms so I hope it stays that way

this sounds proper shit, tracer. hope you and your family are on the mend soon

thanks for your reports tracer

you're welcome! thank you all for the good wishes. i hope this doesn't feel indulgent. obviously many have it worse than me so far.

It's not indulgent at all. We all really want to read this. Thank you for doing it.

^^ agreed, this is really helpful and (so far) relatively reassuring info.

hoping we hear from stet soon as well.

I take it you're in Australia Tracer Hand, so you wouldn't know CNN's Chris Cuomo. (If you're in, like, Hoboken, New Jersey, just pretend I didn't say that.) Similar to your posts, he's still going on and doing his show every night from his basement. First-hand accounts are enormously helpful to people like me who are living in perpetual fear of this.

tracer is an American who lives in London

according to my xls

The grand ILX tapestry is a mystery to me. I piece it together as best I can.

Trayce is in Australia.

my wife’s had an elevated temp since Friday and generally been feeling duff - felt a little worse today, called 111 and the doc said ‘yeah, probably a touch of the ‘rona, what are you gonna do 🤷‍♂️, call back if your symptoms get more severe’

if only there was some type of, like, test or something that could tell you if you had it

fingers x-ed for the best bg :(

oh shit, good luck to you both

Good luck Mr and Mrs Gazzara.

best to you BG.

Has Tracer posted anywhere recently?

good luck to your wife and of course yourself and the whole family! not fun to have when you have a young'un to attend to :(

(er, unless my .xlsx is faulty)

tracer posted here earlier today (phones and kids) and on one of my whatsapps

Good luck bg

yeah, we’ve got a 21-month-old - challenging enough keeping her entertained without the possibility of a visit from the ‘rona

my eyes have been super-itchy today and i’m knackered but that could just as easily be the start of hay fever season and being run down from being cooped up for three weeks

time will tell i guess - if my wife has been ill with it since the end of last week it’s been pretty mild so far, thankfully

This is a good thread. am wishing all the rona-touched a recovery and some solace thru what sounds like a lot of frightening misery.

Best to youse BG <3

Sorry to hear that bg, hope it fucks off asap!

i maledict...the virus

hay fever season is wretchedly bad here. I opened up the house yesterday during beautiful weather and I feel fatigued today

99% sure it's allergies and the quick bike ride I took yesterday around the block

Best to you all bg. And best to everyone fighting this right now.

hang in there bg.

Sorry I stopped my little narrative. It was starting to get repetitive. My sorry now is that for myself and my kids I think it’s firmly in the rear view mirror. Unfortunately the Lovely Emma B still has a fever, which is not ideal. Day 12 for her.

Emma Brexit?

best to you all obv :)

right there with you mh. issues with breathing for the past few days have me super hypochondriacal but the thermometer comes back normal so chalking it up to allergies and the increasing vice of stress both human and financial.

love to emma b and glad to hear most of you are in better skies!

Best wishes to you and yours bg

And to your Emma b, TH

All best wishes to the bgs, and to everyone else who is currently wrestling with the bug.

thanks everyone

mrs g still has a bit of a temp and is knackered today, started a bit of a cough tonight - a bit short of breath when going up stairs and stuff

i’m knackered but also been up since 6:30 looking after our wee girl and been tense all day worrying about mrs g

just wish there was a way to get tested and then we’d at least know wtf was going on

just wish there was a way to get tested and then we’d at least know wtf was going on

this. the strain of not knowing if one's symptoms are from 'rona or just part of a familiar disease or allergy is emotionally exhausting. good luck to you and yours, bg.

Best of luck to ye both, and to Tracer’s Emma.

Thanks for the wishes everyone, I don't know how I missed this.

It's been a rough and horrible couple of weeks (now on day 20), and I guess I count as a "moderate" case. Lots of similarity with what TH describes -- except I thankfully didn't get fever, which is apparently the case in anywhere between 10 and 30% of cases depending who you ask.

What I have had: incredible fatigue, like can't-leave-bed, can't-even-text fatigue. Two horrible new kinds of chest pain: one a burning all down my windpipe like it has been burned by peppers gone down the wrong way, the other a tight band all around. Lots of heart burn. A weird, dirty, metallic taste in my mouth that made me continually brush my teeth. The tinnitus thing, yep.

I didn't ever get a pneumonia, or even a very bad cough, but my breathing was definitely affected and I got short of air – knocked about 200 off my usual peak flow reading. Blowing up balloons helped.

It also did weird stuff to my heart: my resting heart rate dropped to 55bpm one night, which is about 20-25bpm lower than usual. Another night it cranked to 100bpm.

It's just a really ... weird and new thing, this – it's not like any illness I've had before. I wasn't in much doubt that it was CV, just because the symptoms were so different to flus or colds I've had before.

I think it will be a lot less scary when there's more cultural awareness of it, and we know what to be worried about and what can safely be ignored. Right now, it's as if you're the first person to ever get chicken pox, and so with every new thing you're like "OH MY GOD THE SPOTS ARE WEEPING NOW IS THIS TIME TO CALL 999?"

Also, it's true about the recovery/relapse thing. 4 times I've thought "ah, finally better" and the next day it has socked me again. And it can change really quickly: one hour you're OK, the next you're very Not OK. Which is exceptionally cruel in the more serious cases, I've read, because you think the patient's recovering and then they suddenly get worse. I'm not sure I'm fully out of it yet, but each recovery has been better than the last.

jesus

glad to get a check in, fingers crossed the worst of its over for you

god, that is horrible, sorry you're going through that

Fucking hell, thanks for checking in stet, and hope the worst is over. You are otm re newness; in like five years it’ll be routine and as well known as the flu, but now it’s new and it’s not exactly something you know how to deal with.

Oof stet, that sounds horrible. Hope you're out of the woods soon

wow stet, that sounds awful, though I'm glad you didn't get the pneumonia. fingers crossed you're on the mend now

tbh your description sounds pretty bad even if one knows what to expect, but yes, knowing when to seek help and when to wait it out will be an advantage

best wishes to you, and to mrs gaz (and biz gaz also), and Tracer's Emma too

Sorry to hear stet; get better soon!

jeez stet that sounds rough - glad you’re finally on the mend

That's a vivid account. I still find it so hard to make sense of this thing.

Yes stet, what others said. Sounds awful, hope full recovery comes soon.

christ alive stet. best wishes.

i hope you get well soon, stet. it sounds like a truly horrible illness. best wishes to tracer and emma b too, and to bg and mrs g.

Get well soon Stet, that's a very real and rough account.

It sounds like you're already on the way out of this Stet but get well soon. The very prospect of that chest pain + heart thing is absolutely terrifying.

i only read this thread last night, hope everybody feels much better soon

Get well soon Stet, v glad you are pulling through. Have read quite a few descriptions of covid but nothing quite matching yours.

Glad you're getting through this, stet, and best wishes to the Hand and Gazzara households.

Sending you so much love, stet.

Definitely. Please be well, all of you.

Of course first and foremost, get well, all of you. But I'm curious if any of you have any idea how you caught it, where you caught it, or who you caught it from?

Christ stet, that’s rough. Get well soon.

xp is that really the important thing to be asking here

I don't know, I guess not?

NAME NAMES

I'm interested too! everyone's trying to minimise their risk, it'd be good to know what the riskiest activities are, although we won't know for sure of course.

if i were being asked that question, i would probably not answer

Where they got it is immaterial to the fact they’re sick with it, and what if they weren’t doing anything “risky”?

agreed that it's a shitty question on this thread, c'mon Josh

Oh god, I didn't read it like that at all, not as a judgment. I was expecting more like 'it must've been from the supermarket, which we all need to do' or 'from this one guy in the office a week ago who later turned out to have it'. Obv if they were having nightly COVID parties then yeah I might judge a little but I'm assuming no judgment was intended?

I guess it's selfish to ask though, and I am a shitty person for being curious.

hope you feel better soon, stet, and thanks for taking the time to share how it's been for you.

Ditto--I did not read that as a mean question at all, and I don't think Josh was exactly fishing for names. All three ILX'ers have been very candid, when able to post, about what they've been going through. I think so many of us are mystified and terrified by how this thing gets transmitted. I'm guessing the question was meant more as a general at-work vs. at-the-supermarket kind of thing. I read yesterday about a guy in Ontario who's 30, perfectly healthy, and doing everything he was supposed to be doing, and thinks he got it because he stopped for five minutes to talk to a friend while jogging, maintaining the six-foot rule. Those kinds of stories are baffling.

Candid, and extremely helpful.

yeah we're all paranoid and scared to varying degrees, i am also always curious about that when i hear about someone getting it, bc i am terrified of getting it and curious if they could have gotten it in a way that i am also vulnerable to. if ppl dont want to share thats fine but its not a grossly out of bounds Q imo. in any event it might be moot, after a certain point (perhaps we're there already) itll basically be impossible to guess how anyone got it anyhow.

thinks he got it because he stopped for five minutes to talk to a friend while jogging

Jogging >:(

(xpost) That's more or less what I said to a friend two weeks ago who was fighting pneumonia, thought he probably he had it (he didn't), and was worried he might have passed it on at work: that worrying about that is pointless, because, even two weeks ago, everything was at a point where anyone could have gotten it anywhere. So yeah, even trying to answer that question is probably moot. It's still something that's on my mind anyway every time I read stories like that Ontario guy.

ftr I was thinking about asking what josh asked myself. I'm just selfishly curious to hear if anyone who got it can't trace it a face to face interaction, because there's still so much uncertainty over whether it can be transmitted through surfaces or hang around the air.

no judgment because so many people are still being forced or highly pressured to break social distancing for their jobs

Or other reasons that aren't like, going to an illegal kegger

I get that it's a delicate question for some but fwiw please feel free to ask me where I think I got it should I start posting to this thread from the other side.

I wasn't intending to be judgmental at all. I've just found every story from anyone unfortunate enough to catch this as useful and illuminating as they've been horrifying and scary, and thought it would be further helpful to learn if someone, say, had stayed home isolated for 14 days and still somehow got it, or went to the store only once with mask and gloves and got it, or had a partner with very mild unconcerning symptoms who nonetheless passed on a more serious case, and so on.

No yeah same. I'm doing my best, but we're going to have to go to a couple of stores tomorrow and it starts all over again. Also at this point going to the home improvement store for some construction stuff is getting to be a matter of my partner's mental health. He's not capable of sitting still and is also going through something incredibly stressful in his non-virus-related life right now, and him going off to do projects is the only way we don't both melt down, but it's hard to reconcile that with "Is it worth risking our lives?"

idk how anyone would know how they contracted it? it can be up to two weeks before you show symptoms

It's mere speculation, which doesn't make it any less interesting. But that's just me.

amazing account stet. scary. Thank you for sharing. Wild how you had no fever!!

I have zero idea how i got it. My wife and I came down with it at the exact same time though, so I reckon there was a common source.

i never figured out how i got mono in university

i left my wallet in el segundo

It lives for 72 hours on surfaces - I think it’s much more likely anyone gets it from absentmindedly touching something or cross-contaminating their gloves than talking to somebody two metres away who isn’t sneezing, coughing or furiously spraying saliva while they speak. I came down with it at the same time as Stet, btw, but very mildly and it was gone in a week. Maybe his viral load was greater than mine, maybe it’s because he’s a man, or maybe it was just bad luck. But thank goodness one of us was well enough to deal with our energetic six-year-old, particularly when *he* came down with chickenpox. Props to parents managing childcare and bad rona at the same time.

was going to ask how you were, M! and F. I genuinely don't know what we'll do if we both get it even moderately - the kids will go feral...

Oh god, and pox too?! before all this kicked off I was going to try and see if my 2yo could get poxed before I think about going back to work...

Screen limits went out the window, obviously :D

Yipes re Stet and Madchen -- glad you're both through it, more or less.

Potential surface transmission is one area where I'm not doing all that I should. I have a routine worked out when I bring back groceries where I put everything away, wash up, and then--since I'm usually buying in advance--try not to use those items for two or three days. But I'm sure I've lapsed there.

for real, unless you have had exactly one moment of outside human contact in the last two weeks, it's nearly impossible to figure out

I've yet to have an unbroken two week stretch -- it was two weeks between grocery store visits, but I've had carry-out dropped on my front porch twice in the last couple weeks. very careful with packaging, putting food in new containers, etc. but unless I keep completely to myself for more than a couple weeks it could be any point of contact

<3 to stet, Madchen and Tracer.

Saturday 4 April - Friday 10 April
That stonking headache appears to have been the parting gift from Covid-19. The last lash of the Balrog's whip. Since then I've felt progressively better each day. When I made bread the other day i actually smelled it baking, which was wonderful. Coffee tastes better. And tonight I had a beer for the first time in two weeks. Well, a few sips. The entire beer felt extraordinarily large.

The lovely Emma B was real bad, though. High fever and flattened. We hear a lot about 'Day 10' and that was the day it happened to her. I had never seen her as bad. Unable to get out of bed. Flushed and hot. Zero appetite. I was scared. She was scared. We were trying not to show it. And that remorseless headache I mentioned, the one that moves in like some kind of military hardware and parks its extensible grips right into you - she got it too. And it didn't let up for three days.

Finally, yesterday, she had no fever. At all. We'd booked an appointment at a GP surgery in Stratford that's doubling as a COVID clinic. We walked down there with our masks and gloves etc and hung around on a side street, like the text she'd gotten had instructed. We called them. They said they'd be right out. We were standing right in front of the entrance to an apartment building. People kept going past us. I had to think I wouldn't like living there. All the COVID patients just hanging about like junkies! Finally a couple of nurses came out in derisory PPE equipment - it looked like they had half a white bin bag each - and gave Emma a blog oxygen test and a lung capacity test, right there on the pavement. She passed them both with flying colours. That was the best I'd felt in a long while. We hugged for a long time.

This morning, unexpectedly, she vomited. She didn't see it coming at all. She feels fine now and her appetite's back. Still no fever. But it was alarming.

This week we've watched:

- Hot Shots
- The Naked Gun
- Just Boys (6 part series on iPlayer)
- War Games
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- and me and Emma have watched about 10 episodes of Cheers.

The boys want to be either professional filmmakers or professional ping pong players. They alternate. They're using a terrible programme called HitFilm, written in Java I'm pretty sure, it regularly slows the machine to a crawl or crashes it.

All the ping pong tables near us have closed.

Our lives have become very repetitive. A bit of schoolwork in the morning, games and videos until lunch, then various remote lessons - piano, French - or talking with a grandparent. Then getting outside for exercise. Then back home for dinner and a movie. We're lucky that we have a back garden. But we're starting to feel a little loopy. The biggest thing though, obviously, is that we're getting better.

Excellent.

wow. So glad to hear you're on the up. That must have been a scary time. You might have said already but were you taking anything (and did it help)?

Fantastic to hear

Also good luck to the gazaraos, stet, madchen and all

I say tomorrow night we all stand by our doors and applaud Tracer ... and the missus.

We were taking paracetemol (acetominophin) at max amounts every day, that’s it. I haven’t had any in days, and Emma stopped today.

It’s worth saying we both still feel dehydrated all the time. I certainly don’t feel like running or working out anytime soon. It’s taken a bit of a toll.

I’ll keep an ear out Tom :)

Thanks for all the love! <3. I don't know how I got it, but the week before I got it I was really only at work, so I'm guessing it's from there somehow. Was washing hands and being cautious, but apparently not enough.

I forgot to even mention the headaches, wow. And the upset stomach on the way in. That day 10 thing is weird but definitely real – it was a bastard.

One reason I hope this stuff might be useful is just to give people something to judge against if it happens to them. A few nights in when it was getting unpleasant I found it really useful to read other people's experiences on Twitter and see that what I was going through was relatively "normal" for a moderate CV and probably not worth having a panic attack over.

xp yeah easy on the working out. I took F for a gentle 40-minute walk on Wednesday and when I got home I felt like I'd done a massive workout. Went straight back to bed.

Great entries, much thanks.

Stet is the man

I had a bug in early March which I wonder if was it. On 7 March I came down with a fever, upset stomach, and intermittent fatigue where I felt on the verge of nodding out in the afternoons (quite unusual for me). After a few days of this, I developed a scratchy throat, where I felt the need to keep clearing my throat and had a rough voice - but never developed a cough. I recovered from the fever in about a week, and checked the 111 online site very carefully and went through a questionnaire which told me I didn't need to quarantine myself as I didn't have the symptoms of C19 (which in retrospect seems mad) . The unusual bit is the general loss of stamina which persisted for some weeks after, and I've still got a slightly scratchy throat even now.

If it was Covid 19, with its 5-7 day incubation period the most likely place I caught it is on a very packed train from Oxford to London, filled with the weekend Bicester Village visitors.

What freaks me out a bit is the memory that this weekend (7/8 March) was when the awareness of the real threat of C19 impinged on me, and things started to seem very scary and out of control - and I may already have caught it.

Great to hear Tracer, Emma, Madchen on the mend..

Love to all our ILXoronas and thank you for sharing your experiences.

One reason I hope this stuff might be useful is just to give people something to judge against if it happens to them. A few nights in when it was getting unpleasant I found it really useful to read other people's experiences on Twitter and see that what I was going through was relatively "normal" for a moderate CV and probably not worth having a panic attack over.

we need an epithet for ilx covid survivors

case hardened?

poxy fules

Sonned a virus in a rona beef

aka beefarona

emma b: lovely-haired (καλλιπλόκαμος kalliplókamos)

madchen: beautiful-cheeked (καλλιπάρῃος kallipárēios)

stet: conductor of men (διάκτορος diáktoros)

tracer hand: man of twists and turns (πολύ-τροπος polú-tropos)

mrs g: bright-eyed (γλαυκ-ῶπις)

someone was saying stevie had it too?

Haha I love that you included me in the list (and thanks for all the wishes) but when I said it was very mild and gone in a week, I meant it was like a cold with a bit of extra fatigue. The only reason I think I had it was I came down with it at exactly the same time as Stet, with the same symptoms, but I had it at about 5% strength. For which I am very grateful.

exillors

stet when do you feel like you can go to the shops? i don’t have major symptoms any more so according to the NHS 111 website i can go, but it feels.. weird? i really need to though. grocery delivery in london is literally impossible. we’ve been leaning on friends but they have been rubbish at actually reading what’s on our list and actually getting that thing. no, alpro coconut-apricot yogurt is not the same as “plain yogurt”.

they evidently use the ocado substitutes app

and stevie himself said he had it (or assumed he had)

Having been in a supermarket a few days ago the last thing I wanted to do was stand over a metallic fridge with other people looming over it for too long (people wearing gloves FFS and completely failing to respect other people's personal space). You probably have to take into account that "get the fuck out of this shop as quickly as possible" is very high on people's priority list.

I dunno if this is the same all over London right now but Sainsbury's delivery slots appear to be freeing up a bit more?

Grocery deliveries from not-supermarkets seem like they are more possible? We were in receipt of a massive box of vegetables this morning (ordered from some local firm on Thursday IIRC) which will keep us going for a week at least. And our local butcher is doing decent looking boxes of meat, though we've a freezerful to work through before we start doing that.

so is there somewhere you can check in to find what local non-supermarket places do deliveries? i only know the names (and sometimes only the locations) of the ones quite nearby, which mostly don't so far

I hate to say it, because Facebook neighborhood groups are the worst thing ever, but such local fb groups might actually be good for finding that kind of thing, if you have a decent-sized one for wherever you live and can stomach searching through the curtain-twitching and worse. The big group for my local area has had some good tips lately amidst all the usual nonsense.

I've seen a couple of sites covering South London, which as we know is the important bit. This one's a blog I follow anyway and seems to do some of the job. I don't know if there's a more authoritative single source: https://www.rocketandsquash.com/eating-in-in-the-time-of-covid-19-ingredient-shopping/

ok i might try asking my local whatsapp group, which is much less awful than the FB groups seem to be -- it's heavy on info to help the vulnerable* and so far very light on performative crackpot stasi beef

*i am not really in a vulnerable group (until my birthday lol) but i guess the info would generally be helpful

We got a massive double fruit/veg box plus milk, bread, eggs and butter from Knock Knock. Quality was decent, if not the stuff I’d usually have chosen. For anyone in the Peckham area, Khan’s on Rye Lane are doing deliveries.

Bizarrely, jaguarshoes - next day delivery, we ordered after the cut off last night and it still turned up at 2pm today - they even made a second delivery last week to drop off the bread they forgot in the first one:

https://jaguarshoescollective.bigcartel.com/

jaguar shoes? Were you ordering negronis??

The advice is that seven days after the fever goes you're safe, but since I never had a fever it's shruggy-emoji time for me. I've been out to a shop once and was almost phobically distanced all the time I was there. Madchen is working on masks; will feel a lot happier when I have one of those on.

there seems to be confusion about this. I’ve heard both from a person on the NHS 111 service as well as from the nurses that gave Emma her blood oxygen tests that it’s 7 days from when you first got symptoms, and after that, if you don’t have symptoms, you no longer need to self-isolate. they are vague about this on the official page:


https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isolation-advice/

FWIW, on this side of the pond the CDC advises people to stay home for 72 hours after fever has disappeared and when all other symptoms (shortness of breath, cough) have also disappeared.

What do the Taiwanese health services say? I'd follow their advice, personally.

tracer i dug up some delivery possibilities (i have tried none of these but various friends suggested them inc.mr farrell above -- some are uk-wide but we think most shd cover yr part of east london?) (crossposted on the "bring me soup mfers" london quarantine distress thread also):

Crosstown
Dishpatch
HG Walter
Jaguar shoes
Natoora
Pale green dot

Aha! mark thank you!!

deliveroo and uber eats were also mentioned in the relevant whatsapp discussion, leading to a squabble abt the respective ethics of using each lol

A london-living acquaintance has had symptoms uncannily similar to mine/TH and just tested C19 positive which is probably the closest I'm going to get a test myself any time soon.

Progress-wise I think I'm pretty much over it. Don't much fancy a trip to the gym yet, but no active complaints or anything. So, hurrah, I guess.

good to hear, stet

Do ya feel indestructible now? Like you can hug anyone you want?

I've been frustrated because I've had mild chest pain coming and going for about five days now, and no fever for six. Since I technically still have symptoms, I'm staying in... but if I had these symptoms during ordinary times they wouldn't stop me from going out. My phone tracked about 5 miles' walking/day for the week before I developed symptoms, and now it's around 0.2. Granted I had been walking more because 1) walking is good and 2) there wasn't a whole lot else to do... but now there's less.

I realize these are pretty minor problems compared to what others have been facing, including in this thread. But I'm antsy. Like I was listening to the Rolling Stones doing "She's So Cold," and it was like it was about not being able to go outside, a kid cooped up too long. My energy level must be good, anyway!

So indestructable. I even ate indie fried chicken from the scary shop last night.

On the other hand, I'm just waiting for the "study shows Covid survivors are at massively increased risk of X" news to drop now.

i’m so glad you’re feeling better<3

cheers stet

Yay!

yes great news stet. Do you have any symptoms at all still? I still feel dehydrated all the time, more than a week after shaking the fever. And I still have the ringing in my ears.

the ringing has gone right down but still there if I concentrate, and I'm still get tired much quicker than before when exercising but that's about it

i biked for 15 minutes yesterday and played ping pong with my annoyingly skilled 11-y-o and that night slept for 10 hours.

Glad that the worst us over for you both

still get tired much quicker than before

altogether understandable after what the virus put your body through. great to hear how much better you're doing.

Yeah, great to hear recovery stories

glad you're both well on the way to recovery, stet and tracer

i'm a lot more certain now that mrs g probably has the 'rona than i was the last time i posted itt - we're now on day 12 of likely infection and she spent a few days at the start of week two with a bit of a cough and she was struggling for breath when she did any kind of moving around, which according to the doc she spoke to on 111 is a pretty common second-week progression

it's eased off a bit now she's exhausted all the time and her temperature remains a bit elevated, although not quite high enough to be feverish

still no way to know wtf is actually happening to her, of course, but the length of the time she's been unwell is really unusual for her, and the 111 experts seemed fairly sure that she was showing the symptoms of a mild case

thankfully i'm still not showing symptoms, and at this stage i think it's getting less and less likely that i will, so i've been able to look after my daughter and her but, man, even a much milder case than tracer of stet's really sucks!

i would say don't be spooked by the week 2 dip but pay close attention and if the breathing thing gets significantly worse you should call your GP. there are clinics you can go to in order to get blood oxygen and lung capacity checked.

my wife found it really helped to sit up rather than lie down, and to do gentle exercises that would open up her chest, i.e. holding her hands above her head and breathing deeply.

Blowing up ballons (a tip I read about in the Guardian that seems to have some early backing in pneumonia studies) also helped me. Wishing you both well BG!

^^ my nurse wife says "that's a good idea"

thanks folks - i think the worst of the breathlessness is over but the exhaustion remains

i got an incentive spirometer for her from amazon to try and help her recovery but she doesn’t seem to think she needs it

Very good news :)

tragically i cannot return it to amazon for a refund so i guess keeping three plastic balls in the air with the power of my lungs is my new lockdown hobby

bg, glad to hear your wife is making progress, even if slowly.

my wife found it really helped to sit up rather than lie down, and to do gentle exercises that would open up her chest, i.e. holding her hands above her head and breathing deeply.

This mirrors my experience: I've woken up, lying on my back, with the chest pain; then it tends to lessen when I'm more upright, not leaning back in my chair, etc. It's still disconcerting that I'm on day 8 of mostly just chest pains (day 13 of symptoms overall) which waver from day to day rather than diminishing over time. But it's reassuring to know that the unpredictability is similar for others.

if you can, I've read that laying on your chest is better for lung function due to your lungs being closer to your back, and the lesser weight on them

I don't think I could do that for more than a brief rest or a nap, but it makes sense

Yes, they’re putting a lot of hospital patients in the prone position, I read.

Neue Jesse Schule how are you doing?

how's everybody else?

Saturday 25 April

I'm a month along and tbh I still don't feel 100%. I tried to go for a run yesterday. Felt great for the first 5 minutes and then my chest started really feeling it. Prior to getting covid I was no runner but I had gotten into the habit of a daily run that would last 35-40 minutes. So something's a bit weird there. When evening came I was beyond knackered.

My taste for alcohol has really dropped off a cliff too. I can drink half a beer, maybe one at a push.

Still have the ringing in my ears.

I don't know if it's damage of some sort that I need time to recover from or if it's still rattling around in there somehow.

Thanks for asking! If I'd answered yesterday I would've said I was completely recovered, no symptoms at all. Today I woke up with mild chest pain again. I think it has a lot to do with how I slept—like mh said above, lying on/leaning against my back seems to prompt symptoms.

Bronchial problems haven't really gotten in the way with the relatively mild exercise I've taken lately (long walks, 10-15 mile bike rides), and I don't feel any unusual lethargy. Haven't been able to run lately anyway because of longer-term hip and foot issues.

I left my apartment after 14 days inside on the basis of the CDC saying you can stop isolating within 7 days of the start of symptoms, three days after fever has subsided, and when other symptoms have "improved"—which is a little ambiguous, but I took to not necessarily mean "completely and absolutely disappeared."

I hope you (and I) don't have damage! I did see a speculative news story about permanent organ damage from the virus. It doesn't seem to help to think about that. It's looking like I may be able to get tested within a few days, anyway....

this business about when you can leave quarantine / resume normal activities has been a problem for me, too. (i know someone who's in a similar boat timeline-wise, too.)

i have been sick since mid-march. fever and throat and chest symptoms that were taking longer than the two advised weeks to dissipate while i was waiting them out at home. i did a tele-consult with a local clinic and was told i probably had the virus and possibly bronchitis as a result. (testing has been hard to come by here.) a while after that i woke up with more labored breathing and bluish lips and fingertips and was scared enough to call emergency (that's one of the symptoms they warn you on, apparently much more so than i had, but then i had never turned blue before). the emts checked my stats and didn't want to take me in but i insisted, worried about falling back into my usual under-estimation or under-acknowledgement of my need for help (in anything). in the er they took some vitals, listened to my symptoms, and x-rayed my chest. they said my lungs were healthy (i.e. no ground-glass opacities, no pneumonia, no signs of other pre-existing or resultant problems like popping a lung) and that given the timeline i was most likely over it / on the downhill slope. and that what concerned me was probably just some minor passing mucus blockage, which i should keep trying to clear. so they didn't admit me, just sent me home. more than one staffer i interacted with told me 'good luck'. : /

it's been a couple few weeks since and my symptoms have been frustratingly slow to leave. my temp stayed elevated but rarely hitting 'fever' range, more often just a persistent hot flushing. no real cough of the involuntary sort because it depends on my chest which still gets tight and hard to clear, but generally in familiar, diurnal ways by now. i keep working at it with expectorant and as my temp seems more mild still, i get the picture that most of how i feel could now be correlated with the bronchitis (i don't know how 'residual' viral infection works—am i holding un-attacked lodes of it? can mucus that becomes more watery unleash it in the process of being cleared? idk) because of the symptoms and their responsiveness to otc meds. (nothing really new has seemed to happen with them since earlier in the illness i thought something had gotten to my lungs. so i am assuming that the doctor's assessment would continue to hold good. though it is hard to just rely on that sort of thing with all the uncertainty circulating, and the magnitude of the worst outcomes.) i've been doing a lot to change my position, it seems to help, but then it's all so erratic that it's hard to know for sure. i've recently started taking walks again—pretty much my normal and only exercise—and they aren't notably worse than i'm used to, just perceptibly affected by the condition of my chest and medicated status at the time of walk. i think if i were a runner i would probably find something like tracer has found—at times my deeper breathing is inhibited without intentional deep breathing, and i would need to get at it for more exertion than walking. (i could see the difference between last night and tonight by my heart rate. speaking of which, a friend recommended a pulse oximeter and i have been consulting it faithfully since the doctor at the er pronounced my oxygen stat 'excellent'—making sure that i don't take a turn for the worse there.)

i'm on the hook for about $2500 that i can't afford now for the hospital visit, and though i'd surely like to keep consulting a regular doctor that's an extra hassle on top of everything now. i am pretty sure i will lose (i.e. fail to be offered) my regular summer teaching job any day now. friends have been bringing me groceries and naturally i am on the computer nearly every moment, but otherwise i have been alone. aside from routine commerce and coffeeshops and infrequent meetings with friends that's actually normal for me, but in all this it has not been appreciably nicer because of that. it's been wearying and mildly harrowing.

j. have you applied for unemployment? i'd look into it. even if your employment situation was weird / contract-only you should still qualify for the cares amount. also the eidl / ppp loans if you're w-9. they're out of money right now but i think there's more in the pipeline. glad you're feeling a little better.

glad you've got some good friends bringing groceries j, all the best to you.

j. take care rooting for you

likewise (and everyone else here)

Get well soon, j.

get well

Amazing post j. Thank you. The lack of bad lung stuff on the scans sounds good. Good thoughts your way.

Best wishes J., get well soon.

Yeah, good luck, get well soon, j.

get well asap!
does anyone else find it hard to concentrate on trying to see if your breath is shallower than usual? I had a weird bout of shortness of breath last winter but when I would try and focus on it I started getting mildly panicky which made it all worse.

Yes

My breathing has been really good for the past year or so and this week I have noticed some little bit of shallowness which I don't know if it is due to allergies, slouching, stress or the sweet sweet little co 'rona.

Get well j. Thanks for posting

thanks all, i'm doing my best

feel better j. <3

Monday 27 April

I neglected to mention this in my last entry because it seemed random and unconnected, but since then I've had nausea and awful guts for three days. Nobody else in my family does. I thought it was finished yesterday but then came back with flying colours today. Pretty much impossible to know if it's related, I suppose. But reading how many patients have turned out to have weird intestinal issues has kind of made me think it is. I'm a month out from first symptoms, though. Who knows?

Movies watched:
- Penguins of Madagascar
- E.T.
- Stand By Me

funnily enough, my wife just called her gp today because the last three days she's been having headaches and stomach trouble and her temperature is back up to 37.8

doc said it's not unusual, they're seeing it a lot in the fourth and fifth weeks

the good news is that now that her temp has been back up my daughter and i need to self-quarantine for another 14 days, yay

also take it easy j, hope you're feeling better soon

I'm sorry to all the folks living with symptoms that go on and on.

My natural inclination is to say "good luck" to you j., but then re-reading your post I think better of it! But I hope you see improvement soon. Tracer too—suddenly getting worse again, with whatever symptoms, has to suck the life out of you.

My chest stuff is still wavering—it doesn't feel serious, but it sure does linger. This is day 24 since symptoms started.

they're pushing to open up testing in my state now so i called ahead to a nearby clinic about it. it's really more like a couple weeks out that they'd be able to test me, not the 'accepting walkins' noted on the state website.

given what i told her the triage nurse seemed to think i could be out and about if i needed to, but i don't feel good about that. i don't feel and i don't look like a healthy person, i don't want to be around other people. i would feel good about getting a negative nasopharyngeal test and a positive antibody test.

i haven't been too sure about the late-returning symptoms—i did have a bit of the canonical return after the incubation period seemed to have passed, and maybe i got some slight gastro symptoms quite a bit later—but i have guessed that my seemingly odd drawn-out timeline might be because i developed bronchitis by roughly the typical worsening-point, which afterward may have made it harder to fight the virus, but also because the symptoms of bronchitis are quite similar to the top-line covid-19 symptoms so it has all seemed to be one mottled slow transition back to health.

best wishes to all of you, i am so sorry you’ve had to go through this horrible illness

How's the breathing now, TH? I'm starting to worry that mine still isn't right. It's fine at rest, but even running up the stairs can leave me short of breath.

It could just be hayfever and/or the fact I've hardly exercised in months now, but there are a few stories coming out of long-term damage, eg: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-some-patients-may-suffer-lasting-lung-damage

I had a bacterial pneumonia when I was in university and I don't think my lungs were ever quite as good as they were before.

Breathing's okay but I still feel ropey. Nausea last weekend and into this week, and I still am not enjoying alcohol.

Every now and again a kind of flashback from the first two weeks comes back as a TASTE. This sounds crazy, but there's a kind of burnt sweet taste that comes to me, and makes me feel thinned out somehow.

NB on the alcohol thing, I had a half glass of beer last night, and then did a Zoom chat w/friends after the kids went to bed. During that call I drink one (1) small glass of wine. This is more alcohol than I've had at one time in more than a month.

I wake up this morning with a stonking hangover.

It's enough that I'm wondering - is there some sort of kidney damage involved? I'm probably way overthinking it but I've never experienced anything like it.

If you're still feeling dodgy it's likely that your body is still dealing with the virus or its aftermath and is just too ravaged by all that to deal with alcohol on top of it? I wouldn't necessarily jump to kidney damage but who even knows.

Maybe it's also drinking after a long period of abstinence? I'll report back when I eventually have a drink again - which might be some considerable time away.

as a lifelong asthmatic i wouldn't jump to assume permanent lung damage -- i can be rendered complete useless for climbing stairs for weeks etc by even a minor flu, thx to fluid or mucus not completely cleared from down in there as the body gradually gets back on top of itself

but not a doctor etc plus who knows with this thing

after my pneumonia i had to take it very very gently for several weeks but eventually made a full recovery, lungs are slow healers because always in use and always damp.

I had some shortness of breath after a cough and doctors said after a normal cough it can last 6 weeks so after this presumably it could take a lot longer? Not v helpful, I know!

good perspectives, thx ppl

yes, good to read.

my breathing remains about the same, seemingly some definite improvement in last week on the sort of symptoms that seem responsive to guaifenisin, but with everything persisting around that. it wouldn't worry me as much if this didn't seem to portend the possibility of worsening: it's like an earlier stage when the virus was attacking me, fever threatening to rise, a touch of perspiration on my face, a slight tightness in the chest, but without a notable fever on the thermometer and with good oxygen and acceptable but perhaps shallower breathing. i take it that my immune system did a lot of fighting a while back, i'm just uncertain how to judge the nature of the remnants of the virus or, if it's not really that, its aftereffects. since i seem to have some trouble expectorating much despite medication, i'm especially uncertain about mucus. i take it that it may harbor substantial remnants of viral material that i would do well to get rid of. but is it possible that the well-known hard/dry/tough mucus deposited by this thing is just in itself a major source of inflammation and infection symptoms now, meaning that there is less to worry about supposing that it will pass given patience? when the source of lung congestion is not chronic, i have read things that seem to suggest that the normal airflow-clearing bodily processes do their thing given time (warming and moistening of lung contents, coughing, cilia moving things up, etc). are there any other processes that accomplish this? if there can remain sufficient amounts of virus in a person's system after the immune system has done its primary job to continue affecting the body, should i worry that my lungs will continue to produce excess mucus of the problematic sort, so that there is an issue of one process winning out against another? these are the kinds of things i worry about for hours a day.

since my lingering symptoms seem to manifest mostly on my face / in my thorax between lungs and face (warm back of the neck etc), i have surmised that either they may be connected to the mucus itself or that this is kind of a last outpost for battling back viral material (leaving aside, of course, whatever mysterious things could be going on in other locales in organs i have no clue about, things having a systemic effect, etc.). my sinuses seem to be fairly well supplied. the guaifenesin i've been taking comes with phenylephrine, a nasal decongestant, which seems prudent enough (don't want your lungs getting it from above when you're trying to free them up), but that seems to mean that when i'm medicating my nasal airways are much more likely to be impeded, an unfortunate detraction from my ability to get the best breaths possible down to my lungs.

mrs g spoke to our gp again this morning after a few more days of high temperature, headaches and tiredness

the gp booked her an appointment at a medical centre for evaluation and - who knows? - maybe even a test. the prospect of a chest x-day was floated since she’s still getting winded easily

she’s just headed off now. hopefully we’ll at least get a better sense of whether she does have the ‘rona or whether it’s something she can actually be treated for

gl

hang in there bg. how many days of fever now?

pretty much a low-grade temp the entire time, getting hotter through the day up but with periods of cooler temperatures interspersed just to keep it interesting

very weird

good luck, hope it's reassuring

bg just looking back - so it's been 4 weeks of fever now? that's a long time. she must be really frustrated.

yeah, it’s been a long slog - she’s never been as acutely ill as you were but she’s never felt this shit for so long

it's good that she's getting looked at. it's a long time to have a fever. sometimes it can actually be two things on top of each other that just feels like one long thing i.e. first covid, then a chest infection etc. let us know how it goes.

lol they just asked her the same questions that they asked over the phone, did a quick temp and blood-oxygen test and sent her on her way to keep sitting it out

until she has three days in a row without a temperature i’m quarantined, and then once she does i need to give it seven days before going out again

back to the slog i guess

ooh fuck I feel kind of a bit achey and tired, not hugely so, but can't think what else it would be, haven't been out anywhere for a month, except weekly to the supermarket, wearing mask each time and scrubbing everything with alcohol gel when I return.

how are you doing today camaraderie?

hope your missus is ok BG, just read your posts from t'other day because i tend to avoid this thread because I find people talking about symptoms a bit uncomfortable and triggery - hope all on here are alright.

thanks calz - she’s getting there, albeit frustrated at the pace of her recovery

Had a bit of a bad day today - went a gentle 5000-step walk with my kid and when I came back was really pretty breathless and knackered. So interesting to read this with people saying that in some cases recovery is taking a relatively long time. Ffs CV

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/lingering-and-painful-long-and-unclear-road-to-coronavirus-recovery-long-lasting-symptoms

how are you doing today camaraderie?

how are yall doing?

i stopped taking my OTC medications since they didn't seem needed or helpful (and some seemed to make me feel worse). still have the same symptoms, but more and more mild. don't know what that means. i've been walking every night to try to get some exercise, use my lungs. still limited in taking deep breaths as i was, but the tightness is less otherwise. not that these walks are at all challenging to my usual range of activity.

going to see a doctor this week, hope he or she can say something consoling about all the four million other ways this thing attacks the body. i don't want to be surprised by a blood vessel thing or an immune system thing.

i still feel some tightness in my chest. i'm basically back to normal, though.

- taste for alcohol is back
- weird sweet/burnt taste is gone
- ringing in ears much less
- can do a half hour run with no problem

however any time i do even slightly significant exercise i.e. a run, or joe wicks etc - i need to get a LOT of sleep that night. if i don't, Bad Stuff happens - day-long headaches, total exhaustion the next day etc. That never used to be the case. Also, anything out of my 'normal' range for food will cause disproportionate consequences. Like, if i have something really salty like a pizza or sausages I'll wake up feeling hung over.

A friend of mine was diagnosed with a blood clot in his calf and he's getting a CV test because there can apparently be a clotting connection.

I have a couple of similar things to TH – can exercise now, but really need to sleep afterwards. Also with the food – we had fish and chips recently and it had ~disproportionate consequences~. It's hard to know how much of this is linked to being at home and not exercising or eating greasy food for six weeks tho.

glad you're improving, j.!

yes!

Glad everyone on this thread is recovering.
super minor but i never figured out (and likely never will) why i had a week's worth of shortness of breath. I've been just as panicked since but that - first time - symptom faded with antibiotics.

more about the lingering effects

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-recovery.html

Q for the diagnosed: any recurrence of fever long after recovery? What about an accompanying fizzy/tingly sensation?

i'm still waiting for an official confirmation (which i can't have until a serological test, given my timeframe—but those are not available here), but one of my complaints has been lingering feverish feelings and yes i guess you could say tingliness. not sufficiently elevated by the thermometer to count as a fever, and apparently more localized/less central in body, but decidedly something, well after the fever associated with fighting off the virus had passed (i guess they tend to be fairly confident about that only taking so much time, if you don't take a turn toward needing hospitalization). still sorting that out with doctors.

can i ask where?

ive been getting rushes of hot/cold up my neck/back of head for several weeks now

Graun on the lingering effects

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/15/weird-hell-professor-advent-calendar-covid-19-symptoms-paul-garner

xp yeah, back of neck/shoulders and face. maybe arms and hands on top of that intermittently.

mind you i don't know that my doctor was very interested in where i felt hot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

thks, and thks for article ed

Yes, Ed, thanks, that was really well written.

The long term effects of the rona are the things that give me the fear the most.

I wonder (with no knowledge whatsoever) if some of the long tail folk are being affected by repeatedly exposing themselves to the virus as they go back into the workplace with perceived immunity.

i worried abt that just with like, home contamination

got my negative pcr test, maybe someday there will be serological tests and i can also know that i was sick with the rona. (a friend who had also been sick for months got both tests done, both negative! not a cool feeling.)

also got some diagnostic tests back from the doctor's visit. nothing abnormal, so i'm just biding my time as my remaining symptoms decline slowwwwwly.

glad that the symptoms are declining and you are not

i will decline any further encounters with virii should invitations be extended to me in advance of said encounters

j & TH, be well dears

🚨I wrote about COVID-19 long-haulers—the thousands of people who’ve been struggling with *months* of debilitating symptoms. Many have faced disbelief from friends and medical professionals because they don’t fit the typical profile of the disease. 1/ https://t.co/EvIOcwve0x

— Ed Yong (@edyong209) June 4, 2020

how are the ilxors doing? do you feel a godlike invincibility having had it, or are you still feeling rough?

incrementally better. civil unrest kinda threw my regime of mild constitutionals for a loop.

i feel good. my chest sometimes still feels kind of.. donked out. tight and hurty. but it passes. the ringing in the ears is finally going away i think - or maybe i’m just habituated.

gonna go read that thread

I'm pretty much better. Occasionally I'll cough a bit if I've been leaning back against a chair or something for a while, but if I hadn't already been sick I probably wouldn't suspect it was related. Same for hacking up mucous, which is characteristic of whatever allergies I have.

yeah generally my cough/chest congestion is rarely in evidence and could increasingly look like a cold (not so much allergies for me, those are higher up normally)

but the other day i about died coughing after this, guess there's still some hard stuff in there

this is so cathartic pic.twitter.com/tBF2mAoIOA

— iana murray (@ianamurray) June 3, 2020

It's weird, every time I think I'm completely better something happens that I look back on a few weeks later and realise "no, I wasn't better, that was probably another symptom because it's no longer happening when I do X".

Terrifying thread here: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1268250750121017346.html

It's those sort of experiences being reported fairly frequently that are scaring me the most. I'm supposed to be deciding if I send my kid back to school and it seems am impossible decision.

https://nltimes.nl/2020/06/12/shocking-nearly-recovered-covid-19-health-issues-months-later Netherlands Lung Foundation study says 90% of those who had Covid but didn't have to be hospitalised still having effects 3 months later, 60% have breathing symptoms which make walking difficult.

that makes me feel extremely lucky.

Not sure where to post this but wrt testing & results: my in-laws were tested 1 week ago and were told results would be available in 2-3 days... they've followed up 2x and were told to hang tight.

friend who got taken the fuck out in march but never diagnosed had a serious relapse last month and is being told by their doctor it's strep throat now but nobody's certain. this shit lingers.

regarding the taste thing - I just remembered in February, we went to Panera bread and my wife said the sandwich she got was insanely salty, like she just couldn't eat it, and a manager overheard and gave her a new one, and lo and behold that one was way too salty as well (they both tasted fine to me). she was feeling sick at the time but thought it was just a cold. anyway for the next couple of days she just wasn't really able to taste anything. or rather everything just tasted foul. and then it went away. a few days later I was feeling pretty sick and went to the clinic to get a flu test, and wound up being stunned to find out I didn't have it. idk why I am just remembering this now. should we get an antibody test? they're $100 and I don't know how accurate they are

Speaking of, when will ILE start antibody testing?

always thought of ILE as being more antibrain

that's pretty weird frogbs. the only one i've heard of that's reliable is the roche test.

Yeah, and that's like £400 in the UK. Come the fuck on, HMG

I had an antibody test about three weeks ago. Negative, sadly. My insurance covered it fully.

And I got the results the next day? How can this happen in America idk

I imagine two guys in lab coats flipping a coin

some places like the mayo clinic have only just come out with blood tests that promise to measure the degree of immunity rather than just the fact of having antibodies and thus presumably some degree (not determined by the test) of immunity. if knowing that is important to you, it might be preferable to wait for such a test to be available to you.

how's everyone getting on?

Its interesting reading people say theyre having long ongoing issues with exertion exhausting them and such, as it makes me think of the ligering after effect of glandular fever ie: chronic fatigue syndrome.

You’re not the only one to notice that.
https://meassociation.org.uk/2020/04/covid-19-and-post-viral-fatigue-syndrome-by-dr-charles-shepherd-30-april-2020/

I have a colleague who had it about the same time as me and is still having pretty severe fatigue after-effects, and now is also suffering a blood pressure weirdness which has seriously affected her sight in one eye. Another friend is still seeing fever spikes out of nowhere, literally months after she was first affected.

I still get oddness and weirdness, but it's at baseline hypochondria levels now I think, I'm mostly OK. Haven't done any serious exertion for a while though, must change that

i have no symptoms at all, not even the tight chest i felt for so long, BUT the ringing in my ears is apparently permanently parked there now.

My fear of developing ME is long-standing and profound, it probably worries me more than mild rona so I'm definitely going to be more careful after reading that.

A doctor neighbor was saying he suspects Covid might be more of a vascular illness than a respiratory illness, which could partly explain some of the more mysterious symptoms and lingering effects.

I had the most mild of nonetheless very specific symptoms in early March (loss of smell/taste, tired). I got tested for antibodies in early May and it came up negative. I donated blood in June, and this time I tested *positive* for antibodies. My wife then got tested for antibodies and came up negative. (She also got herself tested for active covid yesterday, since she has to go on a car trip with someone; tested negative). As I understand it, having talked with a few doctors either in the family or that are friends, you're more likely to get a false negative than a false positive, but there are so many other variables to juggle as well. For example, the first test I took was at a clinic, and they used the Abbott test. The second test was automatically given to me when I donated blood via the Red Cross; they use the Ortho test. A doctor friend said that the Ortho test is perhaps more reliable than the Abbott test, and regardless, he trusts the standards of the Red Cross. Add it all up and you get a trustworthy organization (Red Cross), with a trustworthy test (Ortho), with very mild but relatively specific symptoms (loss of smell/taste, tired) and relatively trustworthy results (positive) and indications are that I had it. And yet my wife tested negative for antibodies (and had no symptoms), which can mean I had it but somehow didn't give it to her, didn't have it (and got a false positive), both had it (and she got a false negative), and so on.

If I had it I feel pretty lucky. Right now I don't know anyone else personally that has tested positive for either active Covid *or* antibodies. All said and done I'm not sure how much being positive about being positive would change the way I lead my life, anyway. Even if I was carrying antibodies it's not like I can, say, walk into a store mask-free, waving my test results; masks are still mandatory. But I do wish I knew for sure so that I could donate plasma to antibody studies. Then again, when I looked at the Red Cross policies it seems like they are only seeking to test (for research) people who had an active Covid diagnosis, not people who simply tested (possibly) positive for antibodies some time after the (possible) fact.

I don't deal well with grey areas like that - I find the unreliability of test results to be one of the most frustrating things/ roots of my anxiety about this whole damn pandemic.

I don't like it much, either. Tbh I think the only reason my brain is handling it relatively well is that I am also teaching my 15-year old how to drive. After a few hours on the highway thinking to myself that I'm going to die while struggling to exude calm, everything else seems a lot more chill.

We’re going to travel and stay with friends and all of us are on two week lockdown now - back to being as meticulous as we were in March so no stores, no socially distanced drinks, etc. - and are going to get tested as a precaution next week.

I could get an antibody rest at the same time but I wouldn’t trust the results either way so kind of feel like what’s the point? But the more I hear about people’s differing symptoms and experiences the more I think I might have had it in March. I had a high fever and chills/aches for three days then felt good for like a week before getting really sick with a low fever and pneumonia symptoms for three weeks. Was it all the same illness? Separate and unrelated? Either, neither or both covid?

sounds suspicious for sure

this is fascinating:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/17/covid-19-symptoms-falls-into-six-different-groupings-study-finds-coronavirus

i suspect i was in group 2. skipped meals, fever. and interestingly, loss of taste/smell seems to last linger in milder cases.

Cluster 6 for me I think, feeling pretty lucky I was in the non-hospital half

Hmm, I don’t really fit any very well. Cluster 3 plus muscle pain and heavy fatigue but no cough or fever. I’m presuming I did have it because I share a bed with Stet!

Yeah I had the muscle pain and fatigue too. It’s not that exact, is it.

itt survivors call the terrifying "fascinating"

i could read stories like this all day. straight into my veins, please!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/health/covid-antibodies-herd-immunity.html

i just read this thread through cuz i've been mostly off ilx since march for multiple reasons and just wanted to check on y'all. love & health to everyone.

Here's an oddity: I got a super-bad sunburn last week, more like a reaction than an burn: bright red face before evening after an afternoon sitting near the sea in Ayrshire. Safe to say I don't think I've ever had a burn like that in Scotland, and nobody with me burned. It was so odd I can only think it was somehow Rona-aftermath

Tracer that's incredibly reassuring and I haven't even had the rona (or at least I don't believe so).

There’s a follow-up to that which has largely the same message:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/opinion/coronavirus-antibodies-immunity.html

Weird, stet.

stet are/were you on antibiotics? I know that can happen w/ sun exposure

I came off a three-week course of antibiotics for Lyme two weeks ago. It seemed to zap my sleepiness inside of a week...but symptoms that when I look back now seem to predate the Lyme—muscle and joint pain, shortness of breath after only very light exercise—have been worsening by the day. Every day a new pain, plantar fasciitis in both feet, knees, elbows, lower back. My body hurts all over and last week I had to quit playing tennis after just ten minutes because I couldn't catch my breath.

I've had a whole blood workup, Covid test, and this morning a stress test w/ EKG on treadmill. Everything normal. I'm increasingly wondering if I had Covid back in February or March and this is the fallout—scarred lung tissue and joint pain.

I want the antibody test but it's being discouraged at every turn, which is frustrating. I saw the article upthread...is anyone in here having lingering lung/joint stuff like this?

Thankfully no. I have been pretty healthy the last few years though, exercising, gave up smoking etc. I got plantar fasciitis about three years ago, no idea how or why. Excruciating, particularly in the morning. A lot of calf stretching over a number of weeks ended up fixing it.

super frustrating not being able to exercise during this whole thing

My advice is do whatever you can. Just stretching alone can really help with that joint pain.

Yeah I'm trying. It's weird, I've completely curled up—like lost my flexibility...and was worried for abt a week that it's something neuromuscular, but these recent tests seem to eliminate that, so far as I understand

welp

oh no

how are you doing?

You've got the bug, WmC? Jesus, I hope you recover as quickly as possible.

Dang, and best wishes. Rest up!

Best of luck with this; hope it's mild

Keep us up to date if you can WmC.

Mild so far.

I had been having low-grade flu-ey symptoms since Wednesday the 19th, the day after my mom died. Achiness, mild but not severe diarrhea, temp running about .5 to 1 degree higher than mine usually does. I just thought I was crashing after running on adrenaline since Tuesday the 11th when Mom first went to the ER.

By yesterday, day 6 of just feeling run down as hell, I felt something was up. Called my primary care doc this morning and said "I know I got tested Monday the 17th, but here's the situation. Is another test indicated?" They had me come in and did another rapid-results test, which came back positive this time. My wife and daughter are both feeling fine physically. I've been prescribed a z-pack and my doc said that all 3 of us need to start on big doses of C, D3 and zinc.

I let my sister and brother know, since I was around them and other family Saturday at Mom's burial. Let my boss at the bar know; obviously I'm not going to sling ethanol for a while.

what a heavy time WmC, so sorry

That's terrible on top of everything else. Best wishes, WmC.

Be well bro

I'm sorry to hear this, WmC.

Stay strong, WmC!

best wishes

Best wishes, WmC

get well soon, WmC

Thanks everyone, if current symptoms are the worst of it, everything will be peachy. We've got loads of friends who will do grocery and pharmacy runs for us.

have you been tested yet?

sorry, just realised there were more posts than I realised to read back through

Hope this is the worst of the symptoms for you WmC and that the family manages to dodge it

Sorry to hear WmC, hope it fucks off soon.

sending you posi vibes WmC

Good luck WmC, and condolences. Sorry you're having such a grim time of it right now.

omg WmC! your attitude is admirable and impressive under the circumstances -- get well soon!!

Thank you all, so so much. The good vibes I've gotten here and on Faceache have been wonderful and buoying.

I've been paying close attention to my symptoms just 'cause shit is interesting. I opened my bottle of Fernet-Branca and took a big whiff and my sense of smell may be a little muted? I had some ham, and homemade bread with a lot of mustard last night for dinner and that was a little muted too. Not entirely gone though.

Take good care of yourself, my friend! hugglez.jpg

man you have been through a lot recently. hope you make a speedy recovery and get back at it. loving the fernet smell test

socially-distant high fives from over here WmC. Good luck!

Best wishes WmC!

Post-viral fatigue can fuck right off. Strangest sensory symptom is everything is too salty. Otherwise I'm on a steady climb out of it.

congrats and sorry in that order

wmc, i’m so sorry you have lost your mom and now have to go through this as well. my deepest condolences and i hope you recover quickly and well.
kia kaha<3

I tested positive for antibodies a second time, and got a little more clarification on those results from the Red Cross. The first time I tested positive was when I donated in mid-June. Yesterday I received a (snail mail) letter not just reaffirming that my results were reactive, but stating that they actually performed additional antibody testing on my blood donation "to get a better understanding of the reactive result of the initial test," and I came up positive again, meaning "you most probably were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and had a past infection." After the mandatory wait I donated blood again just 10 days ago, so called up the Red Cross to find out my even more recent results, and they said I tested positive once again (meaning, a third time). There's a backlog (no surprise) on the results of that secondary additional antibody test (whatever it is; it will potentially affirm my fourth positive result), but in the meantime I've now been signed up for a monthly study to see how long my antibodies last and in what numbers.

Just as a reminder, to show how weird and random this illness is, assuming now that I did have covid it was back in the second week of March, and my only symptoms were a loss of smell and taste and general fatigue. And that all passed after maybe 4 or 5 days. No one else in my family got sick following me, afaict, though each of my kids had a day or so of fever and otherwise generic symptoms a few days before my own mild symptoms. And one of them, fwiw, much later tested negative for antibodies, as did my wife.

39.6. This is it isn't it. No coughing tho

It could be a lot of things. Guess you’re quarantining regardless though! 🙃

Good luck louis. get tested if you can!

hope it's unrelated!!! <3

Whatever it is, stay home and take care of yourself. Do get tested if you can. It will help guide the rest of your actions to know instead of guess. Good luck and get well soon!

Ah fuck. Get well soon and keep us posted, lj!

I didn't start coughing until I'd been rid of every other symptom for about five days. Get well soon.

Fever down, now just sinus pain. Think it might not be rona? Who even knows

I tested positive for flu A and B. Awaiting covid test results.

In quarantine for now. Second guessing some decisions, mostly sending youngest to in person pre-school.

Get well soon WmC and imago

ban isolate 1ou1s j4gg3r

good luck dude

OK yeah this really was just food poisoning, sorry to alarm!

Vmic, but glad you’re not dead

good luck usa lj

.. and update the London Restaurants thread.

by my own hand alas. the list of suspects is long though. a very ingredient-happy stir-fry

Extremely in character, this plus the long soup is confirmation enough never to eat anything you’ve cooked

it was tasty tbf

uh oh was it fried rice syndrome?

it was either the fish, the pak choi, the tomatoes or the jackfruit, and whatever it was, it got me up to nearly 40 celsius

anyway i've been very indulgent and will yield the floor to people who actually have the rona

Happy to hear it (well, not that you have food poisoning, but y’know).

can only be the jackfruit imo. it's good to have you back from the pre-rona lj

good luck & get well soon, LJ and Sufjan & family!

glad you don't have the 'rona, LJ; hope you don't have the 'rona, Sufjan (and youngest, and others)

gws sufjan!

@imago I hope you get better... at cooking haha owned

LJ, alert us at once if you lose your sense of smell!

I, my wife and both kids all have sore throats and feel a bit weak today, hm...

Allergies?

none of us have any allergies, no

Oh, sorry...

The simultaneity of the symptoms appearing suggests to me something environmental or else very contagious. Good luck.

:(

Keep us posted, CAL.

Kids always pick up shit the first weeks back at school... hope it’s that and not that

I mean.. it's day three or four and we all still basically feel ok, like if I was at work I would probably go in, so if we have it it's probably a mild case. Will try to get tested tomorrow.

Got an appointment for our 6-y-o son to get tested tomorrow morning. Thanks to whoever tipped Stet off about the next day's testing appointments going live around 8pm :D We're pretty sure it's not Covid but without a negative test he can't go back to school and I would like some peace it is so important for him to continue his education.

If the testing system is going to fall over with every outbreak of minor sniffles in schools then we're really in trouble. There's definitely something going round but it's probably not covid on the basis that so many children seem to have it.

Yeah, a few of his mates have had the sniffles but of course he’s the only one with a cough.

Didn’t your household have it earlier in the year? Surely he would have had a dose then.

I think nearly all the families I know with kids who've gone back to school have at least one person with bog standard cold symptoms (me included as of tonight - yay) so I'm not too worried.
It happened when they went back during lockdown too. I seem to catch every cold going and then some whereas the rest of my household is pretty immune.
Obv if there's high temps as well you'd better get tested.

Didn’t your household have it earlier in the year? Surely he would have had a dose then.

We’re pretty sure we did, though tests weren’t available at the time unless you were admitted to hospital. And while Stet had it badly and I had it mildly, F had chickenpox! Maybe he had Covid at the same time, I dunno. Whatever, it’s kind of irrelevant because if he went to school with a cough he’d be sent home for a test anyway. So the only routes for us now are (a) no school for 10 days or (b) get a negative result and straight back in. I guess I could have told the school he was home with a cold and not mentioned the cough, but I’m well honest innit.

No rona. But i now have a bacterial infection quite deep that may require surgery.

Yikes!

No rona here, confirmed by text at 6.15am.

Oof, best wishes Sufjan

I seem to be in that category kinder described right now.

xp thanks, table. I had a small surgery yesterday. Now i have a tube running into my buttcheek connected to a wound vac. I have to take one home and carry around like Radio Raheem for a week. But it wasn't rona or even fishjackfruit.

Oof! As someone with much experience in the 'tubes going into very uncomfortable parts of my body' department, I hope it isn't too awful and that everything is okay!

thanks again, and it's not so bad. if it becomes uncomfortable, i can indeed remember the experiences of others on this board. this is nothing compared to what you went through.

My son is off school today looking quite listless, in bed all day + with standard cold symptoms and some coughing, but thank fuck a normal temperature of thereabouts 98f. If he develops a fever then that's when I'll be in a state of PANIC!

Sounds worse than my 9 days of feeling extremely rundown, but ymmv. Glad you're on the mend. xp

my niece has the rona, there was an outbreak in her school :(

but it seems to be a mild dose (she's 13): thankfully her mum and dad seem to have dodged it so far (they live in a roomy house and can keep their distance if need be)

how is everyone from the thread doing all these months later?

(eight whole months ffs)

three teachers at my son's school have got the rona in the last month - it always was one of the most dangerous of professions but it's got even worse now.

I forgot this was the thread for this, sorry. So today is day five. Feel pretty good if I don't try to do too much, but on the other hand, just washed my hair and then my arms felt tired and I was slightly dizzy from this great exertion.

If you've had the seasonal flu before, how bad is it in comparison?

I usually don't get the flu.

Definitely more achy yesterday and the day befoer than I can remember being before.

Hey REDD,
if you need any help or deliveries or anything let me know ok? got a car, flexible, can help you out anytime.
ij

Thanks, so much for your kind offer, Ian, but I think I am okay for now, thanks.

Just got off the phone with NYC Health and Hospitals actually.

fingers crossed for a mild case and a swift recovery, Redd.

Thanks.

Somebody else called back from NYC H&H to talk me about my daughter as having come in contact with someone with COVID and that call took twice as long as the one concerning me.

Concerning me directly, that is

One of the harshest edicts of quarantine is not to interact with pets

Thinking of ya pal

Thank you, my friend, and my other friends.

Pretty much every time I take a reading on my pulse oximeter I think of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDERo9ZNZcg

Wishing you a good and speedy recovery, James!

indeed! hope you feel better soon

not inviting you to share, James, but 98 is good in this context. fingers crossed!

Thanks. Yeah 98 is good.

So today woke up feeling pretty good but then starting having this annoying headache and now worried about my sense of smell.

But could just be due to congestion

But still have sense of taste so...

Are you saying you can’t smell the glove?

How much more Blecch could this be?

i'll bet your crossword times are abysmal now. smdh

<3

So exactly a month since I got this. On day 10 when I got out of quarantine one of my daughters tested positive. That week my energy came and went. I would take naps and not wake up too easily. A few days after my daughter finished her isolation, my wife got her second vaccination shot, to which she had a strong reaction which went on for a few days. I am mostly back to normal, apart from my attenuated sense of smell and the fact that many days my energy just doesn’t feel 100%. So ultimately a mild case, as my doctor told me, just reporting back for full disclosure.

grebt

Thanks!

good to hear. hope you will fully recover soon

Yes, hope for onwards and upwards!

fwiw

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/health/covid-vaccine-single-dose.html

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Carter_Family_1927.jpg
Single Dose, Married Dose

how you feeling now?

Me? Pretty good, thanks. Still can barely smell anything unless it is a strong smell and right in front of my nose. Physical pretty much have my energy back, mentally clear, although still sometimes feel I lost a little bit of my edge, although not so much this week.

Physically

Glad to hear you are doing better.

Thanks!

Me and my bf have it. I was eligible for the vaccine too, just failed to manage to get an appointment what with me not existing on the same time-plane as most people and my cat dying. I feel like fucking shit. We haven't even left the house for a year aside from him going to work and frantic vet trips, no fun times or pushing the boundaries of the rules. Fuck this.

Ah shit, sorry to hear it. Rest up and get through it, both of you.

Fucking hell, that is rotten luck :( Hope you both feel better soon.

ah no, sorry to hear it emil.y. get well soon

Ah I’m sorry emily. It is really not fun at all! Just think how bulletproof you’ll be after your vaccinations though. You’ll be like double strength.

arggh no, emily! i'm so sorry to hear that! seriously, give us a shout if you need anything at all sending to you and i'll sort it for you. or just dm me your address via twitter and i'll get a care package together!

Ugh, so sorry for you.

That's rubbish, hope you feel better soon.

Bleh, sorry you got it emil.y, this year has piled too much on you.

Ugh that sucks, I'm sorry. What awful luck. I hope you feel better soon.

Fucking hell, I'm sorry to hear that, emil.y. Get well soon.

that’s terrible, emil.y. hope you both get well the soonest

Thanks everyone. Feel horrible and feverish but so far it's about flu level, so manageable. Just wish I had my kitty to stroke.

Be well soon and RIP that cat.

Oh no, that completely sucks. wishing you all the best for a quick recovery x

<3 to u emily & sending hugs for the the alby-sized space

wishing you both a speedy recovery with minimal symptoms

i’m so sorry emil.y that both of you are sick and grieving for your cat at the same time. it’s a terrible loss. i hope you can recover quickly and well, and that your heartache will ease

I hope you get better soon emil.y

I'm pretty much through this now. Horrible times but never got worse than flu for me. As a decades-long smoker it could have got a lot more dangerous, I guess.

I hope you two get better quickly, and I'm sorry about your cat.

Glad to hear you're feeling better, emil.y!

Completely anecdotal but someone who works in healthcare was telling me that smokers do seem to get through it a bit better than non-smokers. Something to do with their lungs being a toxic environment for the virus? Anyway, great to hear that you're on the mend emil.y!

yeah, I'd heard that too about smokers, pretty early on, and like lots of things, the effect of Ibuprofen, covid toe et al, never really heard any substantial follow-ups.

yoooooo breakthrough post-vaccine case here folks. woke up yesterday with cold-like symptoms (weary, bleah feeling in throat), got a test, positive. had one wave of chills last night but mostly just had trouble sleeping in a sinus-cold kind of way. fingers crossed.

aw man, Doc! Good luck.

Damn, sorry to hear that. Hope your recovery is brief and uncomplicated.

Ugh. Yeah, good luck, *fingers crossed*

doctor heal thyself!!!

Oof get well soon.

<33333

Good luck, dude.

I hope you feel better soon, Doc

Good luck, Doc! Since you're already vaccinated, the sailing shouldn't be too rough. Fingers crossed…

Doctor, heal thyself!

thanks everybody. i don't have a lot of other risk factors and i feel like i'm gonna be okay... but this still sucks obv. fingers crossed.

Good luck!

Indeed, rest up and get well soon!

Oh no, hope you feel better soon DC.

This should not happen. Get well soon!

get well, dr.!!

y'all are the best!

still just feels like that kind of bad cold that overlaps with feeling generally run down. had a bit of a fever in the afternoon but it passed. if this is as bad as it gets, i'm definitely very lucky.

it's pretty crazy how many vaxxed people I know have gotten sick in the last week, noted ilxor Stevie D also got a posi test and one other person I know as well

I am super paranoid I have it with no symptoms.

you have been repeatedly posting about how many places you’ve gone unmasked, including enclosed spaces, across several states, for a couple of months iirc?

get well hopes and good wishes to doc c and stevie d and any other ilx0rs!

Don't be a dick. I could be wearing a mask 24-7 and still be worried I have it with no symptoms.

i believe that!

?! are you worried, or are you super paranoid?

can you not

wait JiC has posted while not in chicago!?