How Long is long covid?

That's what I ask myself all the time now. Here's how this happened.

I got COVID in September 2021. I had freshly moved back to my hometown, and the first thing I got was COVID. It wasn't terrible. I was nervous because of the CFS, but it really didn't affect me as much as I thought it would. I did notice I was more breathless, but otherwise, I felt like I had a bad cold. I was tested at a clinic, and it was positive. So I did all the things they made us do. However, I started to feel really bad, so my doctor made me go to the ER, which I did.

ER Visit

They had to quarantine me in a storage room. They did some X-rays and found out my COVID turned into pneumonia. Now, this isn't the best ER in the world, but it's the closest. They literally sent me home. I didn't know, but whatever.

I told my husband about it and he's like, they didn't give you meds? I was like, uh, no? Why? Apparently, they were supposed to, but it all healed on its own. Moving on.

Second bout of Covid

The minute I was able to get the shot, I did. I was in the first priority category, and since I did not have my car at the time, I opted for the Johnson and Johnson shot, which I did hear was crap, but it was convenient. I even asked the pharmacist about it, and he said they improved it. So I was like, okay. To be honest, I was tired of masks. So now that I had a shot, NY relaxed on the mask mandate. I think that was a mistake. New Year's Eve comes about. We had a small get-together. The next morning, I woke up like I had a hangover, but I don't drink, and I know I didn't drink. I felt awful.

As the day went on, I noticed I was just sick because I had a sore throat, cough, chest pains, stuff like that, just a gross feeling. I had a COVID test now. I didn't want to take it because if it came back positive, I knew I had a lot of phone calls to make. But to be fair, I am vaccinated, and I wasn't feeling sick. So after a day of contemplating, I took it, and it popped positive right away, like this thing wasted no time. I took a second, and it just confirmed it. I looked up at everyone in my family and said, "I have COVID again." Immediately, everyone was quarantined again because of me. I only had it months prior. My son was so mad he couldn't go to school, my husband was so mad about work, and I was so mad because we were being told not to leave, but the state wouldn't help with food. I had no food at my house. My best friend's shop was nice enough to donate hot meals to us every night. Eventually, I had my husband put a mask on because he wasn't positive and go to the store.

14

That was the number my doctor told me to stay quarantined for, that was the number of days it took for my symptoms to actually go away. Except I had one issue, my breathing isn't back to normal and neither is my sense of smell. My sense of smell is there a little, but my breathing was really struggling. I think I called my doctor 4 times about this, and every time she urged me to go to the ER and I did not listen due to the last experience. Another week goes by and nothing, my lungs never went back and neither did my sense of smell.

Back to the doc

I went back, she did some tests on me and diagnosed me with Long COVID. Now, unlike CFS, I knew what this was, I knew the prognosis and the fact it mirrors CFS totally, so on top of the CFS symptoms over time, I started having double the CFS stuff, because the Long COVID presented the same issues except the breathing and smell. It caused a fast heart rate (again later with POTS), it caused PEM, which is a fatigue/flu-like feeling after doing physical activity. At this point, any physical activity was forbidden. I could actually have a stroke. So everything slowly went from bad to worse.

To now

I have learned how to manage both conditions since they are the same; however, when it comes to flares, I am never sure which one is flaring unless my breathing is an issue. I have an update post coming up.

You can read more about Long Covid Here