Getting COVID was a dumb plan

Haven't written anything in a while- but this time I have a pandemic-based excuse. I had Covid.
I didn't like it. Didn't love it. I don't want no moorrrrrre of it.

TL; DR

Everything everyone says about how bad covid is, is true. I can say this now as a verified covid experiencer- and I didn't even get it nearly as bad as many people. I'm nearly a month away from it and I still feel the brain fog, the exhaustion sneaking up on me, and the cough hasn't gone away 100%.

Avoid, Avoid, Avoid.

So what happened???

At the end of June, I attended the latest Gestalt IT Cloud Field Day event ( #CFD14, of which I will have more to say in later posts). As is tradition, this was held on site in sunny California. This of course means that I had to travel to California, and also travel back. It's during the traveling back where the fun begins.

Based on the timeline, I am nearly 100% positive I contracted covid either in the airport, or (most likely) on the plane. Which means that me getting covid was at least somewhat avoidable. So the flight back had a layover. After a tiny flight from San Jose to Phoenix, I had the long haul from Phoenix back to Philadelphia. While on the first flight, I started to get a headache. I decided this was because of the mask I was wearing (one of the disposable N95 jobs with the metal pinchy thing in the nose), and went without on the second leg of the trip. I was seated at the window, and I assumed that i could just kinda cram my head into the corner and avoid the breath of the people around me. (A completely logical and well thought out plan, I know.. give me a break- I had a headache.)

Anyway, about a day and a half after I got back I noticed I was way winded after doing the most basic of exercise, and I had begun to cough a little. A dry cough. Uh-oh. So I took a rapid test and sure enough- COVID.

The play by play

The symptoms came on fairly quickly. My main symptoms were serious exhaustion, a serious sore throat, a dry cough (one that graduated into a hacking not dry cough), fever for the first few days, and did I mention the serious exhaustion? There was a significant amount of brain fog as well - for the worst three days of it, I was watching nothing but top 10 lists on YouTube and I have retained effectively nothing. I basically let it go on auto play while I drifted in and out of consciousness. I am sure I would be horrified to know what my search engine results might end up looking like now because of this.

I started feeling unwell on 6/28. I took a rapid test, which was negative. So I was probably just tired, right? Wrong. By 8am on 6/29 I knew something was very amiss. The way I described it while canceling some scheduled events was "Coughing some. Right now I feel like 3 percent of my normal amount of energy. Renting a Segway to get from the couch to the bathroom is not outside the realm of possibility." I took another rapid test- covid confirmed.

Things did not improve on 6/30. Based the history of text messages I sent complainin- er, I mean, describing- my symptoms, things did not improve until the 3rd. This was when the cough was at it's worst. I have no doubt that I was terrifying my neighbors with all day hacking and a nonzero amount of cursing. The fever broke sometime the morning of the 4th, though. So great. I can now at least celebrate my independence from wearing sweaters and a blanket in the middle of the summer.

My sleep was quite messed up by all of this too. I had no appetite to speak of for those worst three days, which perversely I thought of as an unexpected diet plan. This plan did not work out. Although for those three days I literally did not want food, once the fever broke and I started to feel better, I assaulted and devoured basically every piece of edible in my house. It was a legit feeding frenzy. I'm sure it was not pretty. Even the cat seemed concerned. (Well.. as concerned as a cat can seem, at least.)

I started feeling bodily better by the 9th, although I was still testing positive until the 12th. Still not sleeping right, and even today (the 21st), I'm still not feeling like I am alive with flavor.

Fast forward about a week, and things are normal enough to start resuming day to day tasks. I got back to running, but my lungs were not (and, as of this writing (July 21) still are not) 100%. In talking to others who have gone through this, it seems that I can expect 4 to 6 weeks of pain and challenges as I work my way back to 'normal.' #fantastic.

Conclusions

All in all, it could have been worse. I never felt in danger enough to go to the doctors, or to urgent care. Still, Covid is no joke. I have read absolute horror stories about people that had it much worse than me. But, even if I had it at a 5 out of 10- wow. It is definitely not 'just the flu.'

I'm going to mark this one as 'definitely only needs to be a one time thing kind of learning experience,' and hope I never have to deal with it again.