All the Buzz

I’ve been sick before.  We all have.  But this is a whole new beast.  And I say that with three doses of vax and that we (likely) got the Omicron variant which is the least deadly in adult with the vax.  So, call that lucky.  I do.

However…..

DAMN!!!!!!

I have never been sick like this before.  I mean that.  I’ve had a septic infection that needed emergency surgery and a fever of 105/106 (40.6 - 41.1 degrees for my Euro folks) and that was still in the rearview of this.

I felt run down.  For about a half day.  But we were in quarantine with Kiddo, so I wrote it off to malaise and lack of doing anything.  Then the body aches started.  Those were followed by the shivering.  Then the headaches.  Things went downhill from there.

I spent a day in bed.  I never spend a day in bed.  But it was a full day.  I know this.  I lived this.  But I’m only peripherally aware of that.  It was some kind of timeless hell.  The aches moved from joint to joint and place to place.  Knees to hip to ankle to wrist to shoulder back to knees.  Sometimes the left side would be knee to ankle to shoulder to groin to neck and the right side would go from back to ribs to wrist to ankle to elbow.  It felt like someone was inside the joint or at the lymph area and setting it on fire with a torch from the inside all while someone took fire grit sandpaper and rubbed it on the skin on the outside.  

While this went on, shivering would come and go.  Sometimes because I was cold.  Other times, just to shiver.  I never had a fever, at least, never that I recorded.  And we took our temps hourly for a while there.  Add that shivering to the aching and painful feelings above and I’m sure you can imagine that world of fun.

Oh, but wait.  When the aches and shivers would come, so would the headaches.  Those were a great time.  Starting in the middle of my forehead and then radiating out to the temples, but they would bring this buzzy ringing to my ears.  A few times when I was like that, I know J spoke to me and I didn’t reply.  I was unaware that she had spoken.  Because of these strange buzzing headaches that went with the body ache and shivering.

Oh, and I read and reread the same 8 pages of the book I was reading.  Because the mental aspect was real for me as well.  And it’s not like I was in the middle of Infinite Jest or something crazy.  I’m reading a cheesy little Tim Zahn book.  Nothing against Tim Zahn and if he happens to read this, I’m a HUGE Fan, Mr. Zahn; Your Heir to the Empire (Thrawn Trilogy) got me into reading as a teen and helped bridge that into adulthood.  But, it’s not like it is difficult literature.  It’s modern sci-fi.  Set in the Star Wars universe.  The fact that I needed to keep rereading because I couldn’t recall or hold that info says something.  

Then the fatigue that comes with everything.  I just timed it.  From where I sit in our house, my “spot” as it were to the bedroom takes me 4 seconds to walk right now.  The other night, J came to help me get to bed and she walked in, saw me stand (and I remember that hurting in my legs and core, just a deep ache) and she walked back and started teeth brushing.  I heard her turn on water to spit as I was getting to the bed.  And I remember just wanting to laydown and sleep.  I still needed to brush and do my pre-bed self care, but all I could thing was sleep.  And the headaches and aches were coming on.  I was so tired.  I’ve never been so tired.  How could I have walked so far?  There were days when J and I moved or carried furniture all day that I felt less tired than that.

I’m feeling better, however.  Much.  And yet, last night from about 2:30 until almost 4am, I was awake.  Aches.  Not as bad, but still…. And head buzz.  Not as intense, but there nonetheless.   And then the shivering again.  I wasn’t cold.  At one point I was so hot that I took of my blankets and still I shivered.  

There is no rhyme or reason to it.  And from what I understand and have read and look into this, the mental fugue state and shivering can last up to 6 months past testing positive for Covid.  This could literally go on until my birthday.

So, who knows and life will go on.  If I miss some of my books or wake and shiver at night for a while, well, I’ve been thru worse, right?  So, we are feeling better and seems like we are on the backend of this.  We missed Valentines Day in all of this, but we have talked about taking lil Miss to Scarlet for a little bit and experience.  We can have a cheese board and a drink, Kiddo can nibble on that and have a desert and a soda and see Bangkok form 37 stories up go from Day to Night and that can just be a late Valentines for the lot of us.  Sounds like the perfect make up to missing Valentines Day with Covid.