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

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