My Corona

As far as I know, I got the coronavirus last week. With no testing, of course, I can’t say for sure, but I had the classic symptoms of a dry cough and a high temperature so I will assume that I did. I thought it would be of interest to document my week for anyone who may suffer the same fate in future. I caveat everything with my absolute lack of knowledge about my condition. This may have been something else and I guess I’ll never know unless I get it at some point in the future.

If you can’t be bothered to read the below, and I don’t blame you, just take one message from this.

YOU DO NOT WANT THIS DISEASE.

For the love of whichever God you prefer, follow the advice, stay at home whenever possible. The thought of any of my more elderly relatives getting this is terrifying, and as much as you might very well ride this out, if you directly or indirectly infect somebody who won’t, that is a bit more important.

Today is Mother’s Day, and if you don’t live with your Mum, the best gift you can give her is to NOT visit her today.

I wrote this at random times as this week went on, so I apologise for the illness impaired quality. It’s a car crash of mixed tenses and half-formed thoughts. Having re-read it, some of it is all over the place but I’ve left it as is, as a warning to anyone taking this lightly. This is how badly your thought process can work if you get this thing. It also demonstrates how quickly things have changed in just one week.

Friday

I decided to work from home and offered the same option to all my team even though the government and company advice wasn’t to do so. I felt a bit crap and with no face to face meetings to do that day, thought it better to be safe than sorry. I had no cough and no temperature as far as I could tell and pretty much carried on with life as normal.

Saturday

No real symptoms as yet. I wasn’t feeling 100% but that could of course have been for any number of reasons. I was heading down hill a bit as I unusally felt the need to have an hour in bed in the late afternoon before heading out to a Mustard gig. Being very conscious of the virus I kept myself to myself, didn’t buy a drink from the bar, concerned about the diligence of the bar staff’s hand washing and instead drank my bottle of water. I felt fine all evening with no corona symptoms at all apart from some mild brain fog towards the end of the night which led to a few less than perfect notes. But hey, that’s no different to any other gig.

However, upon arriving home I had a cup of tea and then took the dogs out the back for their pre-bed time wees and poos and whilst outside I suddenly felt dreadful. I began to violently shake, feeling incredibly cold and went to bed where I didn’t sleep for a good few hours as I just couldn’t get warm. I fell asleep in the early hours for a little while and woke up mid-morning feeling pretty dreadful.

Sunday

The cough had appeared and when I took my temperature today, for the first time it had gone over 38 degrees. At all times prior to this, it had been 37. I had to nip next door to help my Dad with something. I was very mindful that this wasn’t ideal and I took something to open doors without me touching any surfaces and washed my hands as I entered their house. I was taking paracetamol and Ibuprofen every four hours and now as it came to the end of those four hour periods my temperature returned with a vengeance and I felt pretty bad. At around 11pm I HAD to go to bed as I felt so bad. It took a while to get to sleep, but I did and then slept until about 4am.

Monday

I was downstairs popping pills and drinking coffee at an early hour when Rebecca messaged me with a picture of her own temperature reading of 39 degrees. Clearly, working in a nursery, she needed to stay at home. At this point, for the first time, I went to the NHS 111 web site and it confirmed that we both should stay at home for at least 7 days. What I couldn’t find was any advice for family members in a household where one member has the symptoms but they do not. Should they also stay home? I had to resort to asking Twitter for help, which, being frank was piss poor. There seemed to be a huge black hole around detailed help and advice.

I felt a little rough, but as my job is not a manual one I did feel OK to work so set out with the intention of working from home.

I managed to get through the day operating at less than my usual 1000% work ethic. Towards the end of the day, the government updated (created) their advice that family members should also stay at home if one person has symptoms. Whilst it wasn’t welcome news at least there was clarity.

Louise also had no symptoms and Emily was doing her own isolation up in her loft bedroom trying in vain to avoid two weeks away from her boyfriend! Louise did have a very bad chest infection/cough about two weeks earlier and she was beginning to wonder if that had been “it” and this was why I wasn’t infecting her.

It was clearer at this stage what an absolutely catastrophic effect this was going to have on the economy and the country. Pubs, restaurants, football and anything but a supermarket are all going to be losing huge amounts of income. With the advice that “at risk” people should avoid social contact for up to 12 weeks, this cast doubt over Rebecca’s wedding date on the 23rd of May, so we attempted to contact the venue to see what our options were.

Some binge watching happened in the evening and as was the case last night, as it got later I felt a lot worse. I had been awake since 4am of course so at around 10.30 I had to go to bed.

Tuesday

I slept better I think. I must have been asleep by 11.30 and didn’t wake until around 6.30. I awoke feeling like I desperately needed my pills, so I went downstairs to hunt out the paracetamol and Ibuprofen. Everything ached, and I had a serious headache.

I spent some time on social media, trying to get my head around what was happening and of course failed. I read about something called super spreaders, who it seems are all the bell ends on the news and Facebook still going to pubs and concerts.

I also watched a video sent to me by a Florida resident (thanks Steven) of a deserted WDW. It was strange to watch it, not knowing when it would re-open and if our August trip would be on.

This morning was the worst I had felt so far. It felt like the fever had gone up a notch, with earache, headache and entire body ache now being in play. It was also around this time that I read some stuff about Ibuprofen perhaps not being advisable with coronavirus. Now, because I couldn’t get tested, so didn’t know whether this was THE virus or just some other thing, and having got the news from Twitter about Ibuprofen, I made the conclusion that healthcare seems to be some sort of lottery and in years to come, surviving generations will be studying history to see how not to die. Seriously, where is the co-ordinated, official communication on this shit?

During the evening Louise facetimed with two ex-colleagues, community nurses and their experiences were truly terrifying. Of course, they HAVE to go and see all their usual patients, even those with symptoms, however, they have zero PPE (protective gear) and neither the patient or the nurse can be tested. This really is a scandal and a massive failure in preparation for something that’s been coming for months. My ill health was, at this stage, adding to my exasperation and despair.

I collapsed into bed early at around 9.15 with a headache that cannot be described. I also had a lot of neck pain, a fever and a cough. I was cartwheeling downhill quickly. I managed to sleep for two hours, waking up with a head pumping with the beat of my bloodstream. I was some time from my next pills and this upset me greatly. I went downstairs and watched all sorts of crap on TV whilst being outstandingly ill.

This was proper tackle. I tried to go back to bed around 3am, but from nowhere my cough went into overdrive and my fever was causing minor hallucinations. Having kept Louise awake for a nice amount of time, I gave up and went downstairs again. Back to bed at 8.30am for two hours.

Wednesday

The morning found me a little better than last night but that wasn’t hard. This was still next-level stuff. Please, do not underestimate this thing. Again, I caveat that with the fact that I had no idea if this was COVID-19 or not.

Four days in, and I was praying that I had ridden the worst of what the beast had to offer, but there was no sign of this going away.

The rest of the day was a fairly consistent level of shitness, sprinkled with a couple of episodes of high fever, which had me shaking violently. The main symptom, or the worst at least, was my headache. It was a lovely migraine style throbber and when I coughed it felt like my head was a balloon and any particularly violent cough would see the top of my head splattered on the ceiling.

I spoke to my GP on the phone in the afternoon. That was a coincidence and a pre-booked follow up to some recent blood tests for a non-pandemic related condition. Once we’d covered that I told him I had the plague and although being understanding, and confirming that it did very much sound like COVID-19, there was little he could do. If I became “worryingly breathless” I should release the big guns and call 111. Ideally, I’d like to be tested so I know if I have had it and can then relax a little armed wth my immunity and be free to visit and help our parents.

Imagine how well prepared the UK might have been if we’d seen this happening in another country in December 2019. No test for me, because there aren’t any available.

Having had zero sleep last night, I made it until 8pm before falling asleep, but only managed three hours until I was awake and chugging down paracetamol to stop the shivers. I had realised by this stage that trying to do anything crazy like lie horizontally in bed resulted in my lungs attempting to leave my body by any orifice they could find. So, with that in mind, I slept in a “very comfortable” slumped position on about 23 pillows.

Once the pills kicked in, I did pretty well though, sleeping from around midnight until 5.30am.

Thursday

Paracetamol. My lifeline. They were swallowed within seconds of being awake, noticing that we were getting low now my only thought was that if we can’t find any more, then I will be resorting to burglary to get my fix.

Salvation. Paracetamol was sourced from family members and delivered through the front door. Life was worth living again. I honestly thought that today I would need to finally admit defeat and actually be off work ill. There was just one call I had to do first thing and then I could retire.

Well, that one call led to one of the busiest and more stressful days of recent times and when you’re operating at a good way below your normal 1000% sparkling best, that’s not good.

Weirdly, I felt a little better come the afternoon. My headache was still bad but it had morphed now into more of a neck and somewhere near the ear pain. Louise diagnosed it as an aneurism and said I would be dead by morning…probably.

Work was full on until around 5.30, I walked the dogs, slowly and then collapsed a bit and had a half an hour lie down until our tea arrived, a no contact pizza delivery.

The cough was still around, but it felt like my temperature was improving if only I could shake this head pain. I managed to stay downstairs until my normal bedtime and slept almost normally for about six hours.

It was today that Rebecca and Tom made the decision to move the wedding. Hopefully, the new date in July will be far enough out to be viable. Everything is a guess and gamble at this stage.

Obviously, they were both upset, but it seemed the obvious and sensible thing to do. Luckily, Freddie was blissfully unaware and was enjoying his time at home with Mum & Dad.

Friday

The cough was still there, and in fact a little looser/worse, but the temperature seemed to be going away now. The decent sleep seemed to have helped the pain in my head and neck, which, on reflection may have been caused by having to sleep at a right angle on Wednesday night.

I was still having hot flushes. As I type this, my dressing gown is open to the waist and if anyone comes to the front window it may take their sight.

I felt OK through most of the day, to be honest. I was able to be half decent at my job, which is often as good as it gets. I was in that semi-euphoric “I think I might survive after all” phase that comes as you start to recover from a grotty illness. I, of course, did too much, peaked at about 6pm and went downhill quite quickly afterwards.

I lasted until about 10pm I think and slept initially until around 2am, and was then up for an hour before sleeping again until 8am.

Saturday

Upon waking I was again immediately scrabbling for the pain killers as the migraine style headache was back. I rested, waiting for them to kick in for half an hour until the Asda delivery guy turned up about 40 minutes early and I had to spring into action and some clothes very quickly. The headache was that bad I was navigating the route from the front door to the kitchen using memory and a sense of smell, as everything looked blurry.

My favourite substitution was definitely this.

The headache cleared after another hour or two and the cough was still around and yet again a bit looser.

I was definitely on the mend today with just some tiredness to cope with. I walked the dogs with Emily and enjoyed not doing much else to be honest.

I slept OK, from around midnight until 5am, and then managed to get off again until about 7.30.

Sunday

The headache/pain in the neck is back. (Insert your own joke). I don’t know if it is sleeping position induced or some other issue but I can’t bring myself to bother anyone in the medical profession with it right now, to be honest.

I don’t know if my perception of this crisis is tainted because I’ve been ill, presumably with “it” as the week has unfolded, but I have been constantly astounded by so many people not giving this the attention and respect it deserves and demands. In my ill state, I have watched some horrific things on social media, with some of the footage from Italy’s hospitals being absolutely terrifying. To then follow that up by watching a couple of gormless gimps in the their twenties stood drinking in a pub, shrugging this off as something less important than a pint of lager fills me with rage.

Perhaps they won’t be smiling when they aren’t able to attend their Nan’s funeral that they caused by being absolute dicks.

I’ve been a bit preachy over on Twitter so will try to restrain myself here. What terrifies me most about all this is that we seem to be stumbling into a hurricane with a dustbin lid and fly swatter hoping to defeat it.

The question I got asked the most when I told anyone I thought I had COVID-19 was along the lines of “When do you get your test results?” or “Are you getting tested?”. This is just not an option. There are not enough tests to offer to anyone but the critically ill. They are not even testing frontline NHS staff who are battling this thing without the required basic equipment. The claims that all the Personal Protective Equipment has suddenly turned up isn’t true. I don’t say this stuff for dramatic effect, I just want you to stay home. It’s the only thing that gives us any chance to avoid tens of thousands of deaths.

The illness I had last week was relatively mild. It wasn’t pleasant, but nothing worse than other flus and illnesses I’ve had. That isn’t the point. For many others it will kill them so you need not to give it to them.

Stay safe, stay healthy and stay home.

Till the next time……