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

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