I got COVID 😞
-So, I started 2025 by testing positive for Covid for the first time ever. Technically the test was on the 2nd, but I was still feeling weird on the 1st. Not very cool!
Maybe you don't know this about me, but I've been taking covid really seriously with no breaks since March 2020. I mask in literally every indoor space that isn't my own home, and when I have people over I put a mask on. There have been a few case-by-case exceptions, but they are always considered and kind of a big deal. And hey, what do you know, I've only been sick like twice before this! I think I must've gotten it at work because I definitely got sick first and then Olivia got what I had, and over the holidays we had a pretty narrow set of social experiences where it might've come from.
Ultimately, I had a pretty mild case. I had had a good 5 nights straight of bad sleep from what became the end of my trial of buproprion, so I figured I was weak and groggy and fragile from that, but I had lunch and decided to head home early because I was feeling gnarly. That night I slept on the couch gnashing and feverish, sweating a ton, wildly bouncing from too hot and too cold, and when I tested it was strong and boldly positive. I think that feeling went on for another day, but the timeline gets immediately blurry.
I think I do a pretty good job of intuiting what my body needs when I'm sick. The mantra I kept repeating to myself (and then to Olivia once they were laid out) was "What would make my body feel good right now?" No judgement, no quibbling, all compassionate. It meant a lot of laying on the couch and moving really slowly and avoiding my phone and keeping the lights dim and the room quiet. I thought about my vague memories of osmosis jones a lot. There was a particularly intense moment one of those first feverish nights where I was so hot under the blankets, but I needed the heat, and I had my arms wrapped around my chest, and I thought to my insides "don't worry, i'm doing everything i can to help out here. y'all do everything you need to do in there"
From there I felt gradually better, and the recuperative trend was pretty linear. Still easily winded and weakened, but nothing major. Taste and smell were fine, no gastro stuff, maybe a bit of brain fog, but that stuff's hard to measure from the inside. Olivia wasn't so lucky, but it still wasn't as bad as it could've been. I was (and still am) pretty adamant about resting, and I think that made a big difference as far as symptoms sticking around. We cancelled a train trip we were going to take to Red Wing, but we'll find another time for it. I still have this feeling in my body like a curse though. I know too much about how covid works to really believe I'm back to normal.
It was really weird fielding people's reactions. Getting to see the range for just "I got Covid" versus "I got Covid for the first time" was especially weird. I obviously didn't go into work until I started testing negative, and like, again, I have worn a mask every day I've come in the whole time I've had the job so you would think people would like, put the pieces together, but there was just generally an unwillingness to engage with the idea very deeply at all. There are a few other people that mask, and the ones who I'm friends with were some of the few who I felt really understood some of the depth of what this meant, but there's one guy who is as intense about masking as I am, but he didn't seem moved by my infection. I guess maybe everyone is their own special circumstance. Like, I go to hardcore shows where there's moshing and bodies all crammed together and slamming into each other, and for someone's risk assessment that might seem insane, right?
I don't know, it's so hard to talk about this and it doesn't feel all that worth it when I don't have someone sitting with me to engage with. Maybe that's enough for now. I can feel myself pulling myself down into the ol' feelings pit and I don't need to do that right now.