My COVID Story

I have COVID. It's weird to say, after having spent three years saying the exact opposite. I’ll spare you the long historical retrospective, but a short one is helpful. COVID arrived in the USA starting in January 2020. By March, everything was shutting down and the death toll was rising rapidly. I took that shit seriously.

I’m in the enviable position of having run a small business from my home since 2003; “working from home” had been my standard mode for 17 years at that point. My day-to-day life didn’t change nearly as much as most people. However, I immediately curtailed my exposure to other people to an even more minimal level. Started masking up when going out of the house, isolating as often as possible right from the start, and washing my hands at every smart opportunity. Grocery shopping became only a once-per-week activity; if I forgot something, it stayed out of stock until the following week.

Weird Scenes

Also minimal was my absolutely necessary work activity out of the house. I remember how entirely fucking bizarre it was in November 2020, when I had a crucial video shoot up in the Valley. I hadn’t been on a freeway since January, and on my drive up the 405 from the South Bay, I was one of just a handful of cars on what is typically one of the world’s busiest freeways. 25 minutes from Redondo Beach to Van Nuys at 9am on a Friday? It’s likely I’ll never experience that again in a pre-apocalyptic world.

Other than that, I didn’t leave the house other than for crucial needs for about 14 months. By the end of 2020, they were rolling out the first vaccines. At first, they were prioritized for the most at-risk people, which is fully understandable and something I agreed with. But the moment they allowed vaccinations to people in my age group (50-65), I literally signed up for mine on the very first day. I remember it well: April 1, 2021, with a follow-up shot four weeks later.

COVID numbers dropped rapidly after folks started getting vaccinated, to the point that in June 2021, Christina and I felt good enough about the situation to take an actual vacation… to a rental cabin in the isolation of the Mojave Desert. We actually even ate at the outdoor dining area of the Joshua Tree Saloon, our first restaurant experience in a year and a half. And right after that, the COVID numbers went right back up as the first wave of Delta and the other variants started hitting.

Everyone Gets It

It seemed like everyone I knew was getting COVID by then, but the majority of them were vaccinated. Instead of a death sentence, it became something far less severe… in most cases. I still had multiple friends who died, including people who were otherwise young and healthy, challenging the perception of COVID only being dangerous for the elderly and infirm. I also had friends who ended up with severe symptoms that took months to alleviate and impacted their lives in terrible ways. Some of them ended up with “long COVID” and years later still haven’t come back to their former levels of health.

And through it all… no COVID for me. I got a booster in December 2021 and another in November 2022. That latest one was the bivalent Moderna, designed to protect against multiple variants. I continued to mask up regardless of whether local regulations required it. I even worked a large trade show in June 2022 where tons of people ended up with COVID (including my coworkers I was around the whole time), but I was fine. It got to a point that with very few exceptions, no one I knew hadn’t gotten it except me and the rest of my household. I’d begun to think that maybe I had some kind of genetic superpower of super-immune invulnerability to this crazy-ass virus.

Except that didn’t make sense. I’ve been susceptible to colds and flus my whole life. I’m particularly bad with anything that hits the respiratory system, with occasional bouts of bronchitis and two rounds of pneumonia in the books. The only logical conclusion as to why I managed to avoid infection for three full years of a global pandemic is that I did all the right things in my power to avoid it… and it fucking worked.

Until Now

While I'd made it through the pandemic relatively unscathed, recent times have been a bit more challenging. After getting a cancer diagnosis in late January, my mother passed away on February 7. My lower back, always prone to disaster, went out shortly thereafter. And then this past Tuesday morning (February 14) that I knew something else was off in some way. My throat was bothering me. Swallowing felt uncomfortable. Also, I was running into a low-energy feeling as well. Happy Valentine's Day to me. I’d been working a lot and doing a lot of running around recently handling my mom's affairs in various ways, so it was easy to chalk up any feelings of general malaise to those causes.

Still, just to be safe, that evening I took a COVID test. Nothing. Negative. All good. Except me. I wasn’t feeling good at all. By the next day, I couldn’t deny that something was still off, but I figured I must have finally picked up a little cold bug. By Wednesday evening, I knew it was more than a cold. I was getting body aches and chills. Joint pain. My breathing had constant hitches and occasional harsh coughing fits.

Since I hadn’t gotten COVID this whole time, I made the logical conclusion that this was the flu. It felt like the flu. I’d had both H1N1 and H3N2 during their respective outbreak years; they were awful, and had a similar cornucopia of respiratory and body issues. That must have been it, I thought. The flu. And, since I hadn’t had even so much as a sniffle since November 2019, I figured I wasn’t used to being sick, even slightly.

Double Lines

Thursday morning, things had continued to get worse. I dragged my ass out of bed to attend an important Zoom meeting. And yes, before you mention it, I do overwork and my priorities toward taking care of myself are indeed out of kilter. But I figured I’d do this one meeting, get back in bed, and not have to worry about having missed it. During that meeting, I mentioned I was sick as hell, and my coworkers asked if it was COVID. "Nope, tested negative," I replied in the midst of yet another coughing fit. Then a few of them mentioned that they’d tested negative for COVID, but then positive a short while later.

As soon as the meeting ended, and without even leaving my desk, I took a COVID test. We’ve had plenty around here just in case, and these were still within their expiration date. Each time I’d done the test in the past few years, it’s been negative, with just the single control line appearing in the test window. 

You know how they say to check the test in 15 minutes? Well, I did my swab and started the test, turned around for maybe two minutes, and glanced back down at the test card.

Two bright red lines.

I was in disbelief, and then, some some reason, immediately angry. I screamed “Goddammit!” and held the test up to show Christina. She looked shocked as well. I guess after all this time, there was some kind of assumption that our methods of not getting COVID would continue working forever. Obviously that was not to be the case.

It was also right about then that I realized I was feeling incredibly ill. Maybe it just took that test evidence to acknowledge it to myself. I had no energy, swallowing was difficult, everything hurt, and my cough sounded horrible. I went back to bed and stayed there.

How Did I Get It?

Unlike most of you, I’m fairly certain that I know exactly where I got COVID. The time period of exposure to noticing the first symptoms can range from 2-14 days, which is a lot. I’d spent time in late January and early February visiting my mom in the ICU of a busy Los Angeles hospital, and that ICU is literally right next to the COVID wing. Seems like the logical place, right?

Except I don’t think that was it. I stayed masked the entire time I was there, and my last visit was on February 3, a good 11 days before I felt any symptoms. Still within range, but unlikely.

I suppose I could have picked it up at the grocery store, when my son and I went on Super Bowl Sunday to get avocados for the fresh guacamole that’s a tradition in our house for the game. The store was seriously packed, way busier than it is on our weekday runs. However, we were masked up for that trip and got in and out quickly, and I still avoided close contact with people as I continue to do.

So no, probably not. However, there was one other moment that in retrospect seems like that super likely culprit. On Saturday, I met my mom’s widower at the memorial home, helping him make arrangements for my mom’s mortal remains. And guess what? Since he’s an older gent who is hard of hearing, I had to constantly leave my mask off while explaining the plans to him. It was just the two of us in a little room along with one of the memorial home counselor people.

And that lady gave me COVID. Thanks lady. Ready for this? When I called there on Monday to follow up on a couple of details, she was out sick. And with what do I presume she was out sick? WITH THE FUCKING COVID THAT SHE GAVE ME.

No, Not The Asymptomatic Kind

Calming down. Fact is, she might not have had any idea she had it. A whole bunch of people in recent times have been positive for COVID but don’t experience severe symptoms, or even any at all. And of course, those folks are no longer required to test, and they don’t.

I am jealous of those asymptomatic people, because for about 36 hours, I felt like hammered shit. Like, really bad. I have my own pulse oximeter, and for awhile on Thursday evening, things were looking grim. My O2 level went down to 90, which is kind of the demarcation point for getting emergency care. And literally everything hurt. If I had a thing, it was hurting. My tongue hurt. My knees hurt. My chest definitely hurt, a lot. Every cough burned like my lungs were on fire.

Constant chills, awful pounding headache, strange electric jolt sensations, auditory hallucinations… I’m not kidding. It was fucking bad. Both Wednesday and Thursday nights were things I’d rather forget, which is one of the reasons I’m documenting this now, while it’s still very fresh and clear in my mind. I hope it’s less so soon.

Happy Ending?

I think so, or at least I hope so. It's now Saturday, February 18. I’ve had COVID symptoms for four days now. Some of those days have been horrible, no lie. But I will say that things began to turn around on Friday afternoon. While I’m obviously still sick, a lot of the major symptoms have dissipated greatly. Yesterday I was able to be out of bed and at my desk getting some light work handled without feeling like I was going to die. My breathing is a lot more calm, and my body aches have been minimal. My blood oxygen is back up around 97-98, which is encouraging.

My throat still hurts some. I’m still tired. Still sneezing plenty. Still coughing some. I definitely don’t feel remotely great. Not even close. And yes, I still need to take the time and let my body get over this unwarranted invasion. Like my COVID preventative measures, I’m doing the right things for treatment, with plenty of rest and hydration and all that. But I have to think that because a) I’m in relatively good health, b) I’m as vaccinated as can be, and c) the current variant of COVID, as bad as it is for some folks, isn’t nearly as severe as the ones that were killing people in 2020 and 2021, I'm going to make it through this just fine.

I tell you one symptom that’s particularly weird: my sense of smell is gone. I’d forgotten about those stories from my many friends who’ve had COVID. I didn’t realize until Friday morning, when I went to sip some coffee and it smelled like nothing at all. A mentho-lyptus throat lozenge seems like a flavorless hard candy. So that’s just a super weird sensation. I know it may take awhile before that comes back.

Anyway, the point to all this: I’m obviously already much better than I was; it’s a marked difference. I am hoping I’m past the worst part, while being aware it can come roaring back. For the time being, I feel a lot better, and hopefully will continue that path. And also, I’m now in the COVID club along with most other people on the planet, so I can be like all you other bags of disease, and you’ll know I’m not some kind of superhuman. I’m definitely not.