I wasn’t going to write this because everyone’s experience of having corona virus has been varied and unfortunately there are some people who will then shamefully decide you’re lying or overreacting because it wasn’t the same for them.
I also want to sympathise entirely with anyone affected much more severely than us and this in no way takes away from their journey. I truly do want to help anyone who’s going through difficulties at this time which is why my inbox is always open and honesty is key. There’s nothing like having an illness and feeling alone in the midst of it!
I’d got out of the habit of constantly filtering what I say or do to please others (with thanks to life experiences, Glennon Doyle’s book, Untamed, and also there’s nothing like a pandemic to make you realise what’s important).
Health shaming is still an issue for me with an ongoing health condition and the hidden symptoms. For that reason, I sometimes hide what I’m feeling through fear of the word “hypochondriac” being thrown out there. Isn’t it a shit show that people still think they know more about how you physically/mentally feel inside than you - the actual person who lives in that body!
I thought NO, NO NO NO NO NO! I’m not filtering this for anyone (disclaimer if you ask me if your bum looks big in this I will still possibly filter my answer because we don’t need that kind of negativity in our lives, especially whilst Netflix and food are life). But this is different, this might help someone feel less alone or feel like they can reach out for help and are validated. Quite frankly if you don’t agree with my personal, honest account of having coronavirus then you can print this off now squish it into a tiny ball and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. 😊
Now to get on with it for the people who do want to know and understand why we all deserve a voice, as much as others have the right to log off and not read on.
11th January 2021
We took in our puppy and were all excited/nervous for the new journey; lockdown home-school and puppy training.
A family member caught it first and a couple of days later we started to feel off. If you know me my life has a habit of stock piling difficult situations and then handing them all over to me at once, cheers then…
12th January 2021
My first test came back negative. The husband’s inconclusive (he’s later informed that this normally means he has tested just a little too soon and it will be a positive within a day or so). He books another test two days later and finds out he is POSITIVE. Apart from a bit of a temperature and aches he doesn’t feel too bad yet, which turns out to be a godsend…
14th January 2021
AM:
My son began feeling off - sinus symptoms, headache, OH GOD. We’re fairly sure he had the virus in March 2020, he was very poorly. Temperatures, sinus headaches, off the scale fevers, a dry cough lasting weeks and he lost a lot of his hearing for around 8 weeks after. His sinuses haven’t gone back to rights since.
PM :
I was eating dinner, pizza to be precise, fuelling my body well in case the rona caught me too😊and started to realise it tasted weird. Not really any flavour at all, kind of like soggy cardboard (not that I’ve ever sucked on a cereal box but I’m assuming). I didn’t think much of it until about half an hour later whenI got the razor blade throat, swollen glands, and a blocked nose with a strange fizzing sensation like when you do a cannonball into the swimming ball as a kid and forget to hold your nose. Cannonball days are sadly over me, now it would most definitely create waves initiating a tsunami and I’d be responsible for shutting down half of the UK.
We just don’t need that now do we! I’ll stick to sliding in undetected at the steps whipping off my sarong as soon as my knees hit the water safety first people, SAFETY FIRST!
Back to the symptoms - they hit me like a baseball on a home run. My heart sunk and I put 2 and 2 together and came up with Covid 19. I gulped copious amounts of water and realised my throat wasn’t any better. The swollen tonsils were not the same as the usual colds/tonsilitis it was the whole tonsil arch and further down my throat. It felt as though someone had just gently squeezed my windpipe to 80% of it’s normal capacity, an unsettling feeling to say the least. This must be what it feels like if you’re eating a Calipo lolly and tip your head back too far launching the ice pole down your throat at 50mph! (again can’t say I’ve done this but I have a weird way of using analogies 😉).
I went online and booked in another test for the morning, this time adding the kids to my booking and wondering how I was going to get them to tolerate the test.
Truth is I can’t even use a little earbud on the outer edges of their ears without them gagging and shouting abuse at me. How would they cope with me poking around with a 10 inch version up their nostrils and tickling their frontal lobes. Would they have the same “grit your teeth and bare it” mindset as us when they don’t fully understand how important it could be to know either way.
The difference is it won’t just be having some Calpol and crack on with your schoolwork if you have it. It will be having some Calpol with a side of mummy shoving a digital thermometer in your ear every half hour checking your pulse, oxygen saturation, ordering stethoscopes on Amazon Prime (even though I have zero idea what exactly I’m listening for. There’s bound to be a You Tube video out there for this though, right?) Mum turned pediatrician, keeping a captain’s log in case you need to be ventilated at some point.
Over reaction? Or caring mum reaction that had a fright with her daughter in hospital when she was little and knows how poorly her son was last year. Mums should never be shamed for caring, it’s literally built in to us as far as I’m concerned. We have no control over those instincts.
15th January 2021
Test day. Because husband had already tested POSITIVE, he wasn’t allowed to leave the house which meant it was on me. I felt pretty rough, still this far just like the start of a bad cold. Achy, blocked nose, swollen throat and a nasty headache in one spot above my left eye.
Two paracetamols, shower, powder face, get in the car and get on with it. I feel like a lot of mums can relate to that as a morning ritual, as much as we may aspire to one of yoga-matcha-smoothie cycle to work…. maybe soon.
In fact I put the phone on selfie mode and filmed it all, thinking maybe I’ll post this online and help someone somewhere who might want to know exactly what it’s like. You know, before they have to do it for themselves or to their children.
I have yet to post it, it’s about 14 minutes long and includes a badly positioned me and a clear view into my brain through my nostrils. In case you were wondering, I DO have a gag reflex and it is not cute! Sorry TMI.
Anyway, we kept our fluids up did our best to keep up with puppy poo and home school and rolled with it. To this day they have still only missed 45 mins of their set home school schedule which was whilst they were getting tested. Even whilst we had corona virus we powered on, but I’m in no way saying that makes us better than anyone else. Everyone must do what is best for them and their family right now.
I was sleeping on the sofa trying to settle the puppy and to be fair not really sleeping, watching Netflix with one eye open, followed by checking my phone for NHS messages every two seconds. I was down as the kids contact because of their ages, so 3 messages were on the way at some point. I felt like this was a weird out-of-body experience. This thing we’ve been reading about, hearing stories of tragedy, this thing that’s taken lives, changed people’s lives forever, closed businesses taken over the world!... I might have it and where will it take me with it? More to the point my kids may have it and it was all resting on the words of a text message. What a weird world we live in.
My fever was on the rise and when I eventually slept a little, I woke up an hour later sweating, head pounding and felt like I’d been hit by a bus and dragged 50 feet! Why is it so much harder to feel poorly in the night when everyone’s asleep? Maybe because you know you’re doing it alone in the lonely hours?
16th January 2021
06:10am My girl’s results… your coronavirus test result is NEGATIVE
Thank God! But surely she cannot possibly continue to dodge it when her dad has it and quite possibly her brother and I do too. How can I keep her safe?
She can’t go to her grandparents; they are highly vulnerable …
Her dad and I can’t isolate from her…
Its surely only a matter of time…
She had bronchiolitis when she was 3 months old and was on oxygen, in hospital for a week on inhalers and sleeping upright for months after. Needless to say, it scared the life out of me. Does this mean it would impact her more severely?
Ok BE POSITIVE, maybe she’s just super immune and has Wonder Woman’s genes, who do we contact that could take a sample of her blood and find out what she’s made of? I want some of that and can we help others if we find out what is keeping her safe? Seriously!
Side note - bit of NHS info: After we completed our isolation period I received a text asking if we would like to take part in research to help fight the pandemic. Apparently, the only requirements are, you need to be 17 and over. It then takes you to a short quiz to check you are eligible as it states it requires a significant amount of blood. (Do we not all have about the same amount of blood?).
So I put in my height and weight and it pops up SORRY you do not meet the requirements for the research programme. I’m a research health service reject! Bang goes my attempt as saving the world from this virus. Evidentially us short (5ft 1.5in) and pear-shaped gals are of no use to covid research centres and/or vampires. Weird. Surely the fatter my arse, the more blood I have flowing around it right? Or is it just crispy cremes and pizza?
06:31am My son’s results… your Coronavirus test result is POSITIVE
FFS! It warrants profanity! We are beyond sure he had it last march (no testing available to us then), textbook symptoms, by far the sickest he has ever been including a long-lasting cough and a near full loss of hearing for a couple of months after. His sinuses haven’t been back to rights since. He even fainted in Sainsburys at the start of the illness. If he’s like that again will his hearing go back to normal this time, will it be worse, is it the new variant - apparently its more deadly! OMG where’s my result no news is good news right? I’m like a Venus Flytrap for viruses, there is not a chance in hell I’ve got away with it…is there?
07:57am My coronavirus test result… is POSITIVE.
It’s such a surreal moment when you know that you now have it! This, this thing that has been the centre of our universe for the last year and you are now a part of some weird club you didn’t want to make the cut for. Maybe stupidly I start to google people’s personal experiences and only find a handful of reads. I’m shocked and it feels a little scarier that there’s not lots of information to be clued up on. Telling you to watch out for certain things especially where the kids are concerned! I want to read 10 articles about how people felt the same as us and how they didn’t end up in hospital and they are now thriving, healthier than ever before! I think it’s my duty to find out as much as possible for the kids, so I don’t miss any signs that they may need more than just Calpol and cuddles.
I understand some people would rather not know some things for them the knowing is worse. They find it easier to block it out.
I’m the opposite to me knowledge is power. This attitude, along with what I’ve learnt previously, has helped me and others who have been poorly in the past so I’m sticking with it for the foreseeable.
My husband felt a little better than me by all accounts and he felt like keeping moving was benefitting him more. A blessing really as he took over some bits where he could, whilst I dragged myself and my dressing gown between soft furnishings and the medicine cupboard.
17th Jan 2021
I gradually feel worse each day. The nights and mornings are the worst like the usual flu. But with different symptoms slowly starting to stack up.
20th Jan 2021
I was really scared this night. I actually felt like I had been tracking the little germs, creeping down from my nose to the back of my throat and then they had barged their way into my lungs like a two-year-old does when you’re in the toilet trying to have a peaceful wee! I was picturing this little green angry faced germ blob guy, like the ones they use for the ‘Catch it, Kill it, Bin it’ adverts, jumping about on my chest (weird right - must have been the fevers).
I think I was texting my mum as husband was already asleep and not feeling great himself. I didn’t want to wake him, someone needed to be alive and kicking for the kids in the morning.
Mum was already beside herself worrying about all of us. I can’t imagine it as a mum when you want to help your child, but you genuinely can’t go near them. One of the devastating things about the isolation we are all experiencing is the rippling effect on your friends and family. So thus far I had spared her some of the details of how I was feeling so as not to worry her anymore. (Strange when you become a mum yourself, you understand how everything they ever did, and still do, was out of pure love, devotion and motherly protective instincts - NATURE-NURTURE AT IT’S BEST.)
I had these sharp pains in different parts of my chest and taking deep breaths, especially breathing out, intensified it.
Lying flat on your back was a NO NO and I had already been given this advice, if it went to your chest sleep propped up. I had no choice when I slept, I woke up with the pains and breathlessness. But there was no cough accompanying it, surely that meant I was okay, maybe it was in my head? I started checking the blood oxygen saturation reading on my Apple watch periodically and when I felt at my worst, tried to figure out if it was my lungs or my mind playing tricks on me!
There are pictures I’ll attach which show the readings from my watch. I can still look at the data from those few weeks and see how my heart rate and blood oxygen levels differed throughout the illness. How I pretty much didn’t get above 94 for a long time and went as low as 88 at some points. Now I do know this is a watch and not a medical device and other things affect it. I am not a medical professional.
I’m not saying don’t ring your doctor, just stay at home and let your watch diagnose pneumonia! it’s not as accurate as being monitored at the hospital, clearly also doesn’t come with Dr Dave who knows his stuff either. But I researched and there have been paramedics/medical professionals who have compared the watch and their monitor on themselves, taking readings side by side under different circumstances and the results are all most identical on the Apple Watch Series 6 to the medical grade oximeter. (Turned out to be a handy Christmas present, although I did have other ideas for using it in January.)
That night whilst texting my mum I sent husband an email, explaining I couldn’t sleep with the chest squeezing/sharp pains/breathlessness and if you wake up before me check on me. Also reminding him we have life insurance and not to waste it all in Vegas!
Sounds ridiculous but I was trying to let him sleep with a side of, genuinely thinking I may wake up so breathless and in so much pain that I may not be able to articulate what I had been feeling prior to it. That it would be harder for him to get me help if he didn’t know what was going on in the night.
A few times I took pictures of myself during that next week because I felt I looked like I was on my death bed. Again, in my head I thought these may come in handy if someone is thinking the same as me, I can reassure them that I am very much still alive.
My lips had this purply blue tinge, my face was white but sometimes little speckled red patches would randomly appear. My eyes were puffy from next to no sleep and I looked sort of grey from the neck up. I know from situations I have been in with others this (Cyanosis- medical term when your skin or lips turn blue and can be a sign of a serious problem lack of oxygen blood flow) is not good you’re not getting enough oxygen for one reason or another. Especially looking back now I remember how extreme the breathlessness was - I didn’t talk on the phone to mum as much as I just didn’t even have the energy to talk and when I tried to say more than 3-4 words in a row, I ran out of breath and had to pause and wait for an oxygen build up before I could start talking again. I had neck and shoulder tip pain as well which was really uncomfortable and again worse at night. Not a feeling I had ever felt before.
It’s strange the things that stick in your mind. It was one of my worst days when I accidentally watched a coronavirus news update and they were talking about the new variant being 30% more deadly and I sat there thinking shit, we have this, do we have the more deadly variant? Do we all have the same variant? So I turned off the news, we don’t need this, this will not make us feel any better!
I didn’t do much in the way of housework etc. I did the bare minimum of everything with regular nap and rest breaks. I can say for certain if we didn’t have a puppy, kids and home school. I would have been in bed and probably not moved at all for at least a week or two.
I remember when I tried to be helpful and stood at the sink for a minute to wash up a frying pan. The weakness and lack of energy was so extreme that just holding that pan in my hand to clean lasted about 20 seconds before I was just too weak and I dropped it in the sink! How can I feel this weak! I’ve had kids, surgeries etc in the past but this was a different level.
It was snowing at the time we had the virus and we were attempting to toilet train the puppy. When you have the chest like this, you need some fresh air maybe. Do you need to open the door to minus temperatures and accidentally take a mouthful of snow in every ten minutes shouting NO outside for your wee wees…. probably not!
Several times over the next few weeks I promised my mum I would ring the doctor. Maybe there’s some pneumonia there, maybe tiny blood clots on my lungs. I had heard that the virus can cause more clotting than normal, and they can just do a quick x-ray, get me on some antibiotics or blood thinners and send me on my sweet way. BUT I DIDN’T.
I was too scared I’d be told to go to hospital and not be home to look after my kids or be prematurely ventilated and never wake up! I’d read about people who had been ventilated and it had ended tragically. My Dad had also nearly been ventilated with a mystery illness last year and we knew then it was a last resort.
There had been this niggly feeling that I didn’t have a cough, so I didn’t have the one thing that has maybe been put on a podium too much… the continuous cough. id that mean I wasn’t a candidate for any treatment. As other people around me seemed to be not feeling the same symptoms as me or not being honest about them, I felt a bit like a drama queen or an imposter that would be taking up the time of our exhausted overloaded heroes in the NHS. When people who were really REALLY sick needed them. So again, I didn’t make the call.
As I started to come out of the other side of it, weird body aches intensified like labour pains, but in my back and down my legs. For two nights I didn’t sleep with the pain rolling around the bed trying to get comfortable. My son had a similar pain in his back as did husband. But thankfully their journey was altogether not as bad as when he was poorly in March 2020. For my son It was more a nasal head cold, sinusitis. Is it because he had a new variant this time? Is it because he’d had it already and the second time around isn’t as bad? Who knows? We will never know...
Mid February 2021
I still have sinus issues and, some days, the feeling where my throat just feels weird again, nausea and fatigue. My son has the same. Interestingly ear, nose and throat have always been a weakness for both of us anyway.
I have some odd sharp pains, sometimes in my chest still, but it’s not all night, every night. I can talk in sentences, take the pup for a short walk and do most things although I haven’t tried high intensity exercise and am a bit nervous to do so if I’m honest. Maybe there’s a bit of rona lurking around that’s going to rear its ugly head or knock me on my arse again if I did.
We’re more fatigued than before corona but it’s lifting day by day. Bedtimes became earlier, getting up at 8am was like being woken up in the middle of the night. Thankfully we’re pretty much ok now I think.
Here’s my symptom list for a clear quick reference if you get it and want to know if anyone was in the same boat.
-Blocked nose.
-Dizzy feeling when moving head or standing up.
-Swollen tonsils and throat.
-Red, sore spots on the sides of my tongue which really burned when I brushed my -teeth or used mouthwash.
-Continuous headache, mostly in same area - front left side.
-Neck pain - shooting, stabbing.
-Shoulder tip pain.
-Sharp stabbing chest pains and burning.
-Squeezy chest pains.
-Pain in the top of my back in the middle.
-Back aches and leg aches.
-Breathlessness.
-Blue tinged lips, grey skin.
-Insomnia.
-Night sweats.
-Loss of taste and smell but it was dependent on which things I ate and drank.
-Loss of appetite.
-Extreme fatigue.
I really do wish everyone well and welcome any questions if you fall ill or just want to inbox someone and say cheer me up, I’m struggling. That’s all we can do really, obey the rules, do our time in lockdown and look forward to brighter days and new opportunities to restart our lives all the more grateful for it.
Pics as promised …
My Covid-19 Mum Mantra
You know your own body and your child the best, if something doesn’t feel right to you trust your mummy instincts and get them checked out. (Also Calpol and chocolate buttons will get you a long long way in motherhood)
xxx
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