I’m documenting this because it’s been so fucking weird I can’t make heads or tails of what’s happening to my body and need to have it all in front of me to try and make sense of it.
For reference: I’m fully vaccinated and boosted with a total of three Moderna shots. My last booster was in early December because I am not old enough to qualify for a second booster. I’m 47 years old, female, and have a BMI of 33.5, which is considered “obese.” I have no other known comorbidities, but I do suspect an undiagnosed issue with autoimmune inflammation. I have all of the symptoms of psoriatic arthritis. That’s why I quit gluten; it was making it worse. Because I know my body better than anyone, I have always suspected I may have a hard time with Covid. As such, I have taken every precaution until this year, when the mask mandate was dropped and I started dating again. I managed to avoid Covid for 2.5 years, but it finally caught up with me. Thank goodness I didn’t get it until vaccines and Paxlovid were available.
Here’s the timeline of exposure, symptoms, and testing– with commentary from the person who first got me sick as well as two doctors. None of this is hyperbole. This is seriously one of the worst illnesses I’ve ever endured:
- July 4 — Went hiking with someone. Afterward we went back to his house, showered, had sex, then cooked dinner and ate together.
- July 5, 6 — Nothing yet.
- July 7 — Woke up with a slightly sore throat but attributed it to sleeping with the window open all night (allergies?).
- July 8 — Sore throat got progressively worse. I went for a walk with the guy who gave me this shit and he said, “I had a sore throat too, but I just had Covid five weeks ago and took a test and it was negative.” Later that night I took a home rapid antigen test (RAT) and it was negative.
- July 9 — Sore throat got even worse, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I took another RAT and it was negative, so scheduled an appointment at an urgent care center. Oddly lots of burping all through the beginning, to the point where I did an Internet search for “Covid and excessive burping.” Turns out it’s a thing.
- July 10 — Unbearably sore throat and slight dry cough, but no fever. I went to Zoomcare and asked for a strep test. The doctor said since I had no fever and had a cough, she was going to give me a Covid PCR test instead. I told her I’d already had two negative RATs and she said, “For people who are vaccinated and boosted, those rapid antigen tests are garbage.” Apparently the vaccine keeps our viral load so low, we often don’t test positive with them. By the middle of this day I’d lost my voice.
- July 11 — The PCR test came back negative. I was shocked but at the same time not shocked, because at that point it felt like it had to be strep. Sinuses began acting up as well. I got my voice back for this one day, but lost it again the next day for almost an entire week. I’d just switched to all smart bulbs, which made turning on any lights… difficult.
- July 12, 13 — Felt like I’d died and gone straight to hell, and Satan himself was shoving a wire bottle brush up and down my throat all night, every night followed by slashing it with razor blades. This lasted for 11 FUCKING DAYS. I made a video appointment with my PCP. Also major sinus infection. I spent all night coughing so hard I literally pissed myself. At this point I was so fucking miserable I couldn’t function. I didn’t even work those days because I was so sick. I took yet another RAT and it was negative.
- July 14 — Barely able to speak, I talked to my doctor. He said, “Another one of your sinus infections, huh? What’d I give you last time? A Z-pack?” I squeaked, “When I had that flu, yeah.” So he prescribed me Azithromycin. I picked it up after work and took the first two pills.
- July 15-18 — Still the worst sore throat I’ve ever had in my life. Even getting my tonsils out didn’t hurt that badly. Sinuses started to clear up.
- July 17 — Just to be sure it wasn’t Covid, I took another RAT before returning to work in the office Monday. It was negative. That was negative test #5 but I still wasn’t totally convinced it wasn’t Covid, so I double-masked at the office each time I left my cubicle. I also masked up because I thought to myself, “If this isn’t Covid and Covid is worse than this, I do not fucking want it.“
- July 19 — I got my voice back, sinuses felt better, and my throat began to feel a lot less sore. I could only assume at this point that I had, indeed, had strep. I don’t always get a fever when I have a bacterial infection, but as soon as I finished the five-day course of antibiotics, my throat magically got better. However, because the doctor at Zoomcare wouldn’t test me for strep, I’ll never know if that’s what it really was.
- July 20 — Worked at the office. Still double-masked whenever I left my cubicle, even if it was just to use the restroom. I kept going back and forth; it was strep… no, it was Covid and my viral load was too low to test positive… no, it had to be strep. No, Covid. I could never make up my mind which one I had.
- July 21 — My best day so far since the mystery illness began. Sinuses were almost cleared up and the only throat pain I’d had left was from it being so raw, but it was healing. I’d been taking Mucinex for a few days and the cough was productive, but not deep or painful. My energy level was good enough to do grocery shopping during lunch and cook a huge batch of red curry that night. Of course I double-masked at the store and everywhere else I went, because I still was not convinced it wasn’t Covid and still, if it wasn’t, no fucking way I wanted it. There was something in my gut nagging at me that although it probably was strep, I should take precautions anyway because of the way the BA.5 variant behaves, the level of community transmission, and what I’d been reading about low viral loads and negative test results.
- July 21 — Middle of the night… I woke up in an uncontrollable coughing fit, gasping for air. It was very deep, productive enough to have to grab a tissue to spit into, and quite painful.
- July 22 — I woke up with new sinus congestion. I took yet another (#6 now) RAT and it was… positive. Like really, really, unmistakably positive. The T (test) line showed up dark as night, in under two minutes. In fact, I had to double- and triple-check to be sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing because the C (control) line hadn’t even shown up yet! I looked at it and said out loud, “What the fuck?” I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing because I fully expected it to come up negative like all the rest, especially considering how much better I’d been feeling the day before. Even after the 15 minutes the instructions said to wait, it was clearly positive.
The only reason I even bothered to test was because a friend of mine suggested they won’t show up positive until the cough begins. I’d been coughing for two weeks, but this time it was deeper and more painful. Really, though, it was the new sinus congestion that made me suspicious and it had been four days since my last test, so I thought… why not?
So I called my doctor’s office and they squeezed me in for a 10-minute video call where I showed him the positive test. He facetiously congratulated me (because before we had joked about how I kept catching everything but Covid). In all seriousness, though, he suggested I may have actually caught something else from my July 4th date, began to recover from it, then caught Covid because my immune system had been weakened. That does make the most sense, but I’ll never know for sure what it was. It could have been a cold, like he suggested, but the sore throat was too awful for it to have been a run-of-the-mill cold. It could have been strep, but I’ll never know because they wouldn’t test me for it. I suppose it could have been the BA.1 or BA.2 variant and now I have BA.5, but that seems the least likely scenario given the timeline and types of symptoms (the older variants cause fever and body aches). It could have been Covid this entire time and my viral load was so low I never tested positive until one day the virus replicated like mad, made me sicker, and then showed up on a test. I’ll never know, but right now it’s definitely Covid.
I’ve been taking Paxlovid exactly as directed and the taste in my mouth is so bad it keeps me up at night, but it’s worth it. My sinuses are congested– again— and my throat is sore– again– and I’m coughing– still. But the symptoms do feel a little different this time. The congestion is obnoxious, but it’s not a bacterial infection and I’ve been able to get some of it out. The sore throat feels more like a regular one this time. The cough is only really productive in the morning, and my lungs aren’t so congested I’m gasping for air between coughs. It’s still a deep cough, though. I still have never had a fever and no body aches. My symptoms are consistent with what’s being reported with the BA.5 variant.
So, today is officially Day 3 since testing positive. I told my boss and I will not be working in the office at all next week. I’m hoping I don’t get the Paxlovid rebound.
Here are all of my symptoms since this whole thing started, in order of appearance; some of which are so bizarre, I knew they could only be from Covid:
- Excessive burping (before symptoms really set in, about when the sore throat started).
- Massively, unreasonably painful sore throat that lasted for 11 days which only Ibuprofen and popsicles helped.
- Sinus infection.
- Itchy, painless, but relentless dry cough.
- Fatigue, but I attribute that to becoming so exhausted by lack of sleep from all the throat pain and coughing.
- Bloodshot, goobery eyes in the morning.
- Unexplained bruising on my upper body, two of the bruises being on my boobs; one is rather large and dark and next to my nipple.
- Excessive urination (during the period known for sure to have been Covid – I’ve lost 7 pounds in the last week).
- Deep, painful, productive cough.
- Sinus congestion (a second round of it, but not as severe as the first).
- Sore throat (also second round, but not as severe as the first).
- Intermittent reduction in smell and taste.
- Diarrhea (presumably from the Paxlovid).
- 7/25 – Loss of taste.
- 7/25 – Fatigue.
So it appears that either what I had at first was actually worse than Covid, or it’s been Covid all along and my viral load is finally high enough to test positive but I’ve had symptoms for so long, they’re finally getting better.
Either way, the whole thing fucking sucks because this is my 3rd weekend in a row home sick (been symptomatic for 17 days now). And now that I’m actually testing positive for Covid, I can’t claim ignorance and be out in public, even with a mask on. I am isolating until I test negative. I only have six of the free government-issued tests left, so I’m going to wait a while before I test again. Maybe I’ll just do what the CDC says and isolate for 5 days then mask in public… not for 5 days… forever, from now on.
And no more dating because now we have monkeypox, too. So between Covid, STDs, monkeypox, and men generally being shitty self-serving assholes all-around, fuck a bunch of that.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT, Y’ALL:
- Even if you have had Covid within the last FOUR WEEKS you can still be infected by the BA.5 variant, especially if what you had previously was BA.1 or BA.2.
- Even if you have had FOUR VACCINES you can still be infected by the BA.5 variant.
- The BA.5 variant is now the dominant variant in the U.S.
- The BA.5 variant evades antibodies from vaccines and infections from previous variants.
- If you are fully vaccinated and boosted, there is a very good chance you will test negative despite symptoms.
- The vaccines can cause a viral load to be so low as to be undetectable.
- Undetectable does not mean you’re not contagious.
- Undetectable does not mean you won’t have symptoms, because symptoms are the body’s immune system’s response to the virus.
- The more haywire your immune system is due to myriad reasons (like inflammation), the worse you will react to the virus despite having low levels of it in your body.
- KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE. IF YOU HAVE EVEN A SINGLE SYMPTOM BUT TEST NEGATIVE, ACT LIKE YOU FUCKING HAVE COVID BECAUSE YOU PROBABLY DO.
(Sources: All the news articles I’ve read and news podcasts I’ve listened to from the New York Times, NPR, and Scientific American.)
*gnaws off own arm*