The lingering symptoms of a mild Covid19 case.

I know I’m no one to judge you, to tell you what to do and I surely don’t pretend to do so. But I chose to speak about what the experience of having Covid-19 has been to me, in case anyone wants to know how a medium case develops. All we see in the news are the stories about people who in a somehow miraculous way have no symptoms at all, or those who in a truly miraculous way (To a believer as myself) recover after spending a month or month in the UCI, in coma, with a ventilator. I’m here to talk about the spectrum of people who are between those two extremes, but also to speak about the aftermath. I’m also here as a chronic illness, immunosuppressed patient, who has asthma and arthritis and how those processes have been affected too.

I can’t tell you how I got infected, because I had been home in self-isolation for 25 days when my symptoms started. On April 8^th I had diarrhea and migraine, which I blamed on anything else but the virus, and the next day I had what I felt like was a very strong and fast asthma attack. I used my inhaler and went to the E.R., where they told me that as I had been at home for almost a month there was no way I had Covid-19, and with no further blood test or X-ray they sent me home. That first week was the worst, I felt a pain that I had never felt before on my body, like if it was being run over and it was about to explode. I was tender to touch, I couldn’t sleep for more than 2-3 hours, I cried my eyes out because of the pain, I couldn’t eat or drink anything without having diarrhea and nausea, my head felt like a ticking bomb, I had horrible nightmares, I felt exhausted and I couldn’t recover myself no matter what I tried. The second week, the same, plus an urinary tract infection. I remember telling my mom that whatever I had in my body was a different kind of illness, a more aggressive one, an unknown one. I kept having the same symptoms, with a plus on two nights: I had the most draining night sweats, that left me like I had just came out of the pool, and then, at the next day, my temperature would drop to the minimum before hypothermia ( 35°C). When it happened for the second time, I told my psychiatrist (who’s my closest doctor) and he send me some tests and x-rays, all came out non conclusive, so he told me to attend the hospital he works in. I did, and there they treated me like a “covid-19 suspect case” for the first time. At the next morning, at 4 a.m., I was allowed to go home to wait for the covid-19 test results, which came back positive some days later. The UTI went away with a medication, but the rest of the symptoms stayed the same, and have stayed the same, even when my second test result was negative in the first week of May.

And that’s what I want to talk about. I’ve been negative for 41 days today. Still, I have diarrhea, strong headaches, night sweats, pain, fatigue (sometimes needing to take 2 or 3 naps a day), and difficult breathing in and out. I’m more dependent of my inhaler that what I’ve been since I was 5 years old, needing to use one 3 times a day and the other one 2 times a day. I’ve lost a lot of weight, like about 8-10 kgs. My arthritis medication was suspended by my doctor since April, and my mildly aggressive chronic illness is having the time of its life crooking my fingers and keeping me up at night thanks to the pain and inflammation in every joint, starting in my jaw and ending on my toes. My skin is so dry from the constant diarrhea and sweating that it’s cracking up open, and I’ve had a lip injury for 20 days now. I don’t know, when I go to sleep, if I’m going to be able to work and study as much as I need the next days, because there are days in which I can barely get out of bed and I can’t focus. Last Monday I slept 3 naps, 2 and a half hours each. I’m doing my Master’s, and my thesis. I need to be able to do something, but there are days in which it’s simply not possible. On Saturday I went out for the first time to a place that wasn’t the hospital since March. I walked a block and came home gasping for air, with my lungs like I’ve run a marathon and my body aching, in the worst physical shape I’ve been in my life.

And I’m here. I was able to have a covid-19 case that was treated at home, I didn’t step on a UCI, I had no traditional symptoms, I’m lucky, but my body is exhausted and broken and somehow forgot how to go back to normality. People all around the world share the same, they have been up to 3 months with symptoms until they started to feel themselves again. To them, I hug you! To the rest, I just want you to think if you are willing to have symptoms for 2 months straight just because you think this is a political conspiration, or because the BBQ couldn’t wait, or because the face mask is too tight and doesn’t let you breathe.