Hurricane Helene... then... Went to Washington DC, and then COVID happened... Yes, I finally caught the dreaded covid. I'm on day 12 of dealing with it right now. I'm going to skip talking about Helene in this post, but it was bad here.
Anyone who knows me knows I thought I was immune to covid, and maybe I was up until now. I never caught it during the pandemic, and I thought it was because of my blood type or genetics or something. They also know that I was afraid to catch covid because it is known to cause POTS, which I already have and I absolutely do not want to make it worse. So when I tested positive I was naturally very scared. Turns out covid has mutated enough, so if I had any naturally immunity before, covid learned how to bypass it.
Let me back up. Why did I go to Washington DC? My husband was invited to present at a conference in West Virginia, and we decided to stay with a friend who lives in DC so that we could see DC since it was so close. This is how he is. His ambition is so strong that he doesn't expect (or he simply ignores) the reality of his plans to fulfil his ambitions. I'll say a few things about the trip to help you understand my exhaustion:
It was supposed to be a 6.5 hour drive to DC. That's like driving from Bismarck, ND to Minneapolis, MN, which we did several times. Except that on the east coast you should always add a couple of hours to driving time due to traffic. About 8.5 hours later, after a lot of stop-and-go on the interstate and the need to exit the interstate and drive through towns to avoid crashes on the interstate, we arrived in Harper's Ferry, WV. We stayed in a great little mostly fragrance-free Airbnb. The next morning we wanted to spend 1 or 2 hours being tourists and seeing the sights of this tourist town, but what we quickly discovered was that it was impossible to park anywhere near the attractions unless we paid $20, and we were not going to be there long enough. Also, he was in his dress suit. So we drove through the town, and later a friend told us we honestly saw it all just by driving through, so I don't feel so badly. It was quaint, but just a historical village with a good view of the rivers.
So we drove to Sheppardstown, WV and I dropped him off at the college where he was presenting. I took my licorice pills with enough green tea that I felt strong enough to go exploring a little on my own. Well, I tried to follow GPS to a park along the river and I ended up going over the bridge and into Maryland. Then I made my way back and had lunch, then went shopping downtown. It was a cute downtown with an herbal shop, a sustainable living farm store, a really cool bookstore, a natural fiber only women's clothing store, a small new apothecary that focused on soaps and salves, a fantasy figurine store... lots of really interesting places. But after all that I was tired, and it was time to go pick up the husband. The trouble was that the husband was feeling sick and not well enough to drive, so I needed to drive us most of the way to DC. He was thankfully able to finish the drive. It was supposed to be 1.5 hours, but it took us about 2. We arrived at the restaurant and met our friends, had a great meal, explored Alexandria and found grass-fed organic gelato, then went back to their place for the night.
I was too overly stimulated from doing too much, so it was hard to sleep well. My husband slept maybe 2 hours, but he has insomnia issues. But this day was the big DC day! This was the day we needed our energy for!
Thankfully our friend works in DC, knows how to get around, and was our tour guide. He drove us everywhere (except the two times we needed an uber) and saved us A TON of time and energy. We toured the US Capital building, went to the Library of Congress, went to the Smithsonian Natural History and American History Museums, went to the monument, went to the Cheesecake Factory, went to the Vietnam and Korean war memorials, went to the Abe Lincoln memorial, and then went to the Thomas Jefferson memorial. We arrived back at 11 pm, totally exhausted. I think my experience of this day deserves a blog post because I felt like I was on a pilgrimage and I felt really enlightened by many things I saw. The problem with this day was that I was around so many people from all over the world - the crowds of people (especially in the Natural History Museum) were so thick that it was almost intolerable because it was hard to see much through all the people.
So you can image all the opportunities I had to catch covid, on top of being worn out and exhausted. And weak from reacting to fragrances and fumes.
Sunday, the drive home. I woke up with a strong sore throat, but I thought it was just my ME/CFS and I was crashing. I wasn't well. I barely had the energy to load the car with my things. We went out to breakfast and I was able to eat well. I chose to drink coffee knowing I needed the push to help me survive the day. Coffee normally affects me badly because it's too strong and hurts my heart... this barely did much for me. We drove for a while and arrived at Whole Foods midway through the day. I should have been really hungry, but my stomach did not want food. I bought a super light meal of fish and force fed myself, but my throat hurt and my stomach was not happy. Okay, I still thought it's just ME/CFS. Shopping was annoying and difficult. I didn't have it in me to think through much, but we had to buy groceries to stock our fridge with. (Hurricane Helene caused a lot damage and made grocery shopping a major difficulty, so we had to shop in Charlotte the week prior and then chose to shop out-of-town again on the way home.)
We get home, and Monday and Tuesday I felt sick with a sore throat. I wasn't well, but I kept thinking it was just a sore throat and cough from ME/CFS. I went to work at my new job (this will be another new post) on Wednesday, but I wasn't ok. If it were any other job I would have called in sick, but this is a new start-up business with very very few customers so far, so I sat there for 5 hours without talking to anyone. While I was at work I started to get body aches and a fever developed. I was so uncomfortable that I realized it was worse than my normal "feeling sick with ME/CFS" crap. So after work I bought a Covid test kit. Within a few minutes the kit showed a strong line for Covid. After 15 minutes the line was even stronger.
My symptoms were out of order. I started with the sore throat and cough for 3 days, then developed the body aches and fever (stayed around 100.5, didn't get hotter) for 2 days, then I finally developed the congestion and "head cold" stage which has lasted 7 days so far. I'm still sick right now, but it's just manageable congestion now. I wasn't able to sleep without taking this (it's a clean version of Nyquil made by Genexa) because otherwise it wasn't possible to breathe and my coughing wouldn't stop. I lost my sense of smell and taste, but not completely. I could taste 20-30% of anything I ate, and mainly just the bitter parts. I had a burger patty and I could only detect the texture of it, I really couldn't taste it. I had horseradish to try and drain my sinuses, and I could feel the heat but I couldn't taste it. I haven't really experienced that before, so it was alarming.
Covid wasn't as intense as other illnesses I had (H1N1 that caused my POTS is still the worst I've had), but one thing it did do to me that I have not experienced from other illnesses was keep my heart rate up over 100 bpm for 3 days straight. Even at night, my heart rate remained high. My Fitbit and Oura Ring were both giving me a lot of warnings of tachycardia while at rest. This was abnormal for me, even with POTS. I'm used to my HR going down to the 80's while I'm resting, or even crashing low into 50's when I put my feet up. When I'm on my feet I'm usually above 100, yes, but not at rest. So this showed me how hard my body was working to fight Covid, and it does give me some concern.
My high heart rate was why I wanted to see a doctor for a saline IV. The problem was, Hurricane Helene destroyed the plant in North Carolina that makes the IVs. So the doctors said no, the best thing I can do is drink electrolytes and stay home and rest.
I got covid really quickly. My husband, on the other hand, didn't develop covid symptoms until 5 days after I started having symptoms. He progressed through it faster than I did. It only knocked him out for 6 days, and I'm on day 12 still with symptoms.
It's too early to tell how covid is going to affect me long-term. I'm weak and exhausted, I still can't taste much, and I'm still symptomatic.
