Coping with COVID-19

On New Year’s Eve, Gideon and I celebrated making it through 2020 without contracting COVID-19. Perhaps we celebrated too soon. Last week, we both tested positive for the virus and have been on lockdown ever since.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem ashamed of contracting the virus. It’s almost like they think a positive COVID-19 diagnosis means you are dirty or something. Well, Gideon and I are habitual hand-washers and we haven’t left the house to go anywhere besides work and the grocery store in a year. We did everything we could to prevent it, and we still got the virus.

There’s no shame in getting it, and that’s why I’m sharing our experience with all of you. Regular readers of this column might say I’m a pretty transparent person. I find that transparency especially important when dealing with COVID-19, a virus that has killed, debilitated and divided so many Americans.

Here’s a truth most of you can get behind: COVID-19 sucks. I had very mild symptoms, and it still sucked. Gideon got sick two or three days before I started having any noticeable symptoms. His symptoms were quite noticeable — the first night, he couldn’t regulate his body temperature and barely slept a wink.

We immediately quarantined separately in case I didn’t have the virus. I felt well enough to clean the kitchen, feed the kitties and prepare meals for Gideon. He ate and tossed and turned and took the medicine I gave him, hoping it would help him sleep. It really didn’t. Gideon didn’t get a good night’s rest for days.

Monday night, I started to feel kind of gross. As a professional writer, I should probably have better words to describe it. But any time I get sick, that’s the first word that comes to mind. Come Tuesday morning, I worked extra hard just to get out of bed. While I had some mild congestion and a headache, I felt overwhelmingly exhausted.

If you know me, that’s not normal. I usually pop out of bed, drink a glass of water and complete my morning skincare routine right after my morning alarm goes off. I’m not the type of person to drag my feet once I get going, so I could tell something was wrong when I slapped on my hyaluronic acid moisturizer and immediately fantasized about going to sleep again.

Gideon was finally on the mend, but he was looking really bad for a while there. One night, he said his throat closed up if he slept on his back. I barely slept in case he needed to go to the emergency room, something he contemplated several times over the first three days of his illness. Fortunately, he never lost his sense of taste and smell.

I was not so fortunate. I haven’t had a sense of taste or smell since last Friday, and it is one of the strangest sensations I’ve ever felt. I’m still putting on deodorant, but I really wouldn’t know the difference right now. I’m still eating to live, but mashed potatoes taste the same as ice cream.

Overall, Gideon and I are so lucky to have mild symptoms of the virus. We haven’t needed emergency room services, and we’ve been blessed with a wonderful support system to keep us fed during quarantine. Gideon’s quarantine is complete on Wednesday, when he will go back into the classroom. My quarantine lasts a little longer since I started showing symptoms later than he did.

By next week, I should be back in the office — hopefully with working taste buds!

While Gideon and I are lucky to have mild symptoms, we know that many folks have it much worse. We will continue to wear the mask and practice social distancing to protect those around us. And if my sense of smell takes a while to come back, I’ll still wear deodorant — also to protect those around me.