My Life with Long-haul - Part 2

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Friday, March 13th, 2020 - We worked from home, and by the end of the day we were told we would not be going to the office on Monday. Most, if not all of you, reading this know how that played out. So I don’t need to go into the details of that getting dragged out until Summer 2021.

For me, this was the best news I could have gotten. I still felt awful after having been so sick a couple of weeks prior. I still was unsure if what I had been dealing with was Coronavirus. How could I know if they didn’t test me? I just thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t die, and I kept my mouth shut because…. honestly, I have trouble understanding why I was afraid to tell people. It was so new and there was so much of a stigma around it, and I just didn’t want people to think badly of me. I was afraid of the stigma of it. That’s the best I can explain it. I can’t really articulate why I was so scared to tell people.

I knew that I hadn’t purposely or knowingly gone around anyone when I did have it. Yes, I was around people, but that was when I thought I had pneumonia or just a bad cold. I didn’t really have much of a choice. But I was so concerned that I had been around people and could have unknowingly spread it to them, and I felt so guilty for that. And, since there was no for sure confirmation that I had truly had it, why bother people with my fears?

What I did know was that the medicine I had been given didn’t do anything to help, and that I still felt awful. I no longer had the cough, temperature, and contagious types of symptoms. What I did have was a fatigue unlike anything I had ever experienced. This was why I was so happy we were working from home, and in lock-down.

This made me feel guilty, too. I knew how many people the lock-down was hurting. People who couldn’t work from home and weren’t making money during the time. People who were forced to go out and work in public areas and be exposed to the deadly virus. People who’s health depended on being able to go places or have people come to them. There were endless reasons why this lock-down was really hard on people. And, I didn’t discount that. However, for me, it was exactly what I needed. Because I needed to rest like I had never rested before.

With WFH (work from home), I didn’t have to get up at 7:00am, shower and get fixed up, and commute over an hour to the office. I slept in til 8:57am and logged in to my work computer from bed at 9am. I laid in bed the entire day while I worked. I logged out right at 5pm, and didn’t have over an hour commute home. I didn’t have errands, people expecting me to be places, and any other daily things that required an output of energy. I wasn’t in the office running around setting up meetings and catering, lifting and carrying things, moving tables and chairs, etc. Yes, I was still working full-time, but my particular position slowed down for a bit at the beginning of all of this. So, my workload was not as heavy for awhile. I wasn’t booking and organizing travel itineraries for my bosses and moving appointments around at dizzying speeds. This gave me the brain and energy break I desperately needed.

During this time, I clocked out during my lunch breaks and took much needed mid-day naps. After work, I would eat dinner and then take another nap. After that nap, I would lay on the couch and watch TV. I just freaking rested and relaxed all day, every day, for weeks because my body wouldn’t allow me to do anything else.

After a few weeks of this, I was pretty concerned that I was still feeling this way after so long. I had gotten sick at the end of February. It was now early April and I still felt awful. I was scared that maybe I had been sick with Corona. I had been talking to my mom on the phone a lot during this, because I had nothing else to do (sorry mom), and had been filling her in on how bad I still felt. She voiced her concern that maybe I’d had Corona. I confided this fear in my dad, and he tried to calm me and say I probably hadn’t had that. But, I didn’t buy it. I had never felt like this for so long after a normal cold or flu.

In mid-April (I think. Honestly, I don’t remember the exact dates at this point anymore), I decided it was time for me to try to push past this fatigue and do some things. It would be a good time to go through my apartment and get rid of stuff I didn’t need, and better organize my cabinets. (Anyone reading this, who has ever been to any of my apartments, is laughing their head off at this because I am known to have the most organized cabinets and closets of all time. How could I further organize? In fact, as I type this, I feel like I have a slight memory of some people laughing at me and telling me exactly that when I told them I was doing this. But, as far as I am concerned, you can never be done organizing stuff.)

I got through two kitchen cabinets. I spent about 45 mins on them. Then I had to lay down. And I didn’t get back up for 3 days. Ok, obviously I got up to eat and go to the bathroom and whatnot. But, other than that, the 45 mins of organizing two cabinets took me down for 3 days.

At this point, I was just straight up annoyed. I wanted to do stuff!! I am an extrovert and a go-getter. I was dealing ok with not being around people, because I learned how to entertain myself being an 80s kid who was told to “figure it out” when I was “bored.” I knew I could be creative enough to keep myself busy while I was locked up by myself. But, the fact that I physically and mentally couldn’t do anything except watch TV was just infuriating. If I can’t be around people, AND I don’t have the energy or ability to do anything around my apartment - that’s just torture.

Again, I was glad for the ability to rest, because I needed it. But I was frustrated that resting was all I was able to do. Here I had this time where I could get caught up on so many projects that had been on the back burner, and I couldn’t do any of them.

I was voicing these concerns to my therapist on one of our weekly telehealth calls, and she pointed out that I had been REALLY sick and my body was just taking a really long time to recover. She had seen me once in-person between being diagnosed with “pneumonia” and before the lockdown. To this day, she says she can hear my cough in the waiting room that evening and being really worried about me. She told me I just needed to rest. I should honor my body’s request, and be grateful I was in a situation where I could rest. It was solid advice, and I listened. I always listen to her. She’s the best.

Over the next couple of months, I began to get some energy back, but never the way it was before being sick. I had enough energy to get out on a short walk every day during my lunch. I wasn’t taking two or three naps a day anymore, I was down to like one nap a day right after work at 5pm.

I had gone out on one really big grocery shopping trip in which I bought enough to get me through a month of lock-down. That grocery trip took everything I had for that week as far as energy goes. But, at least I was able to do it, and it saved me from having to go anywhere for a month afterwards.

I was noticing that everything made me short of breath. Even a shower required me to lay down and catch my breath after I took it. I was also noticing that I was not mentally processing things as well as I used to. Regular tasks for work were taking me so much longer before, and I would lose my concentration so quickly. And any new tasks I was being given were not sticking to my memory. I had to be shown repeatedly how to do simple things that never would have been an issue for me before.

Work was still on the slower side for me, so it wasn’t as noticeable at first. It was just little things here and there. However, I noticed that I was spending an exorbitant amount of energy to keep up with things that would have taken almost nothing for me before. People were not noticing my cognitive dip, because I was spending all of my precious energy to not let people see what was happening to me.

On top of that, I was starting to get major headaches every day, and I was experiencing some dizziness and lightheadedness. I was not typically someone who experienced headaches very often. Every 6-10 months I would have one. But now I was getting several a day, and they were all-consuming. It felt like my brain was expanding in my head and trying to push out of my skull. There was not a part of my head that didn’t hurt when I would get these headaches. Additionally, I found that every time I tried to get up and do anything, I was lightheaded and/or dizzy.

This was all becoming incredibly concerning to me. At this point, we were well into the summer of 2020, we had started calling it Covid instead of Corona, and while my energy was slightly better—it wasn’t great. And all of these other aforementioned symptoms were happening. Occasionally, I would voice these concerns to someone I was close with, and it was usually met with “everyone is having a hard time during the pandemic, you are probably just stressed.” That was NOT the case, and it was hard to be dismissed. I could tell the difference between stress and all of this. It felt insulting to be told that.

Thank God, once again, for my therapist. She said, “Krista, I think what you had in February was Covid, and I think you are experiencing some long-term effects of that.” She recommended I look into getting the antibody test that they were starting to come out with, and see if that could be the case. After my session, I emailed my primary doctor at the time, explained the situation, and asked him if I could get the test.

His response was something along the lines of “Our facility does not feel the antibody test is ready for use yet. Once we feel it is safe to do, I will let you know.” So, I didn’t get it. He never got back to me, so after a month or so, I checked back in, and he said they now recommended the test. When I went in to have the test done, I was told that it could only show if I’d had Covid within the last 6 months. I was about a month outside of that time limit now, so the test would do no good.

Now I had no way of ever knowing for sure if that’s what I’d had, and if what I was experiencing now had anything to do with it. I wasn’t tested when I went to urgent care in Feb., and my doctor made me wait too long to get the antibody test.

I had no idea at that time just how much not knowing for sure was going to hurt me down the line and in the long run when it came to getting the help and resources I would eventually need. I didn’t know what I know now.

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