Covid Finally Caught Up with Me

My journey with the illness I’ve been dodging for 19 months

“Kai has a slight fever. Just thought you should know. But I hope you come anyways. I really want to see you.”

This is the message that popped up on my phone on October 7th, just hours before I was set to get in the car and head to my sister’s house.

I still remember that moment. There were so many questions that popped into my head. So many doubts. So much disappointment.

Should I cancel? That would probably be best. But I’d already packed most of my things. I’d already made Halloween goodies for the kids and a vegan apple cake that I didn’t want to have to try to fit into the freezer.

More importantly was the fact that if I didn’t go then, I’d lose my window. No more trips to see the kids until March, unless I wanted to traverse four hours of snowy mountain roads all by myself. (Which I don’t.)

Could I make it that long without seeing them? Without holding little Alex?

“It’s just a cold, I think,” came another message. “You know how this goes. The kids are always sick at this time of year. It never ends.”

That was true. From October through March, one of them is, indeed, always sick with one thing or another. I could wait a few days just to see how Kai’s illness progressed, ready to roll as soon as he felt better only to have Keira or Finn get sick, pushing my visit out yet further.

Was there any point in avoiding this?

I texted her back: “I’m coming. Getting on the road in an hour.”

I failed to ask the one question that nagged at me.

When I took my suitcase upstairs into the girls’ room where I’d be staying, Kai was standing in the common area, a mask on his face.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “When did you get here?”

I had asked my sister not to tell the kids I was coming and felt terrible that Kai hadn’t been able come downstairs and join us when I arrived. He was supposed to stay upstairs in order to hopefully keep the other kids from getting sick — though clearly it wasn’t the most effective method, since Kai had gotten his illness from his old brother, Ben, who had also been confined to upstairs.

I wanted to hug him so badly, my sweet little fae nephew who looks like a supernatural being from the elf kingdoms of Lord of the Rings. But we talked from across the room, instead.

Throughout the night, he sat on the stairs, watching TV with us from afar. I knew he wanted to be with us so badly so I kept asking him how he was doing and trying to have little conversations with him throughout the night.

We finally broke, watching him sit there on the stairs, and made a little bed for him on the floor across the room so he could lie down and be with us.

He seemed tired, but by then, his fever was gone, and I told him that I thought he’d be back on his feet by the next morning and that we could do whatever he wanted once his energy returned.

And I was right. The next morning, he was his old self again and I gave him a huge hug.

I woke up in my niece’s bed on the 12th and knew I was sick. I could feel it coming on and my spirits sank. I assumed it was a cold, but even so — I didn’t want to deal with a runny nose and sore throat.

I made the four-hour drive feeling my symptoms slowly worsen, and when I arrived home, I unpacked and then promptly fell into bed.

I had no idea I wouldn’t get up again for three days.

The second night of my illness is one I will never forget. I developed a fever that afternoon and from that moment on, I could feel my body rapidly declining.

I developed body aches that were so severe, I could not find comfort in any position. My neck and legs hurt the worst, making me toss and turn, desperate to ease the pain.

As the night wore on, I became severely nauseated. The kind of nauseated that is tortuous. I writhed on the bed for hours, trying to curl up in a ball, which was sometimes the only way I could ease the nausea, but having to move often because my body hurt so badly.

I felt like I was boiling hot in one second, then freezing cold the next. Sometimes, in a fit of what felt like panic, induced by the heat, I’d throw the blankets off me, only to find myself shivering uncontrollably a moment later. Eventually, I left the blankets off, knowing the shivering chills would continue to shift into unbearable heat over and over again, and decided it was easier to just suffer through half of the cycle instead of constantly trying to arrange the blankets in a way that helped me feel better.

At one point, I found myself doubled over, dry heaving for what seemed like a very long time. When the fit passed, I fell back against the pillows into an exhausted sleep filled with fever dreams. I saw kaleidoscope images of landscapes filled with trees and bushes that shifted and turned in concentric circles. Every now and then, I would start to awaken, and as my consciousness ascended, row after row of these images would dissipate into nothing. With each circle of this vision that vanished, I became more aware of the pain in my body that sleep had helped me momentarily escape. My mind desperately clung to the images that were so detailed and real to me. I knew once the picture was completely gone, I would be back in my body, back in the pain, and I could not bear another second of it.

But sleep kept escaping me in this way, falling off me like a tattered robe whose seams could no longer hold.

Near dawn, I wept into my pillow, my whole body shaking and shivering. I had spent hours in agony and I knew it wasn’t over yet.

The next day, I could barely get up to make myself a bowl of oatmeal. And once I’d made it, I could barely get down a few bites before the nausea hit again.

I went straight back to bed and slept for several hours. When I woke up, I knew I had turned a corner. I wasn’t better, by any means, but I could feel I was on my way there.

On Friday afternoon, I went to get a Covid test. I was feeling much better — it was the first day since I’d returned from my sister’s that I felt I could safely drive.

The test was a courtesy for the people I’d arranged to meet the next week, including my physical therapist. I wanted to assure them that though I had been sick, I did not have Covid.

The first test came out positive, but there was a question about how it had been conducted. So I got a swab stuck halfway up to my brain a second time and the second test also came out positive, at which point I was told, “There’s little chance this is inaccurate. Two positives in a row is the real deal.”

I headed home in absolute shock. I’d planned to go to the grocery store, but now faced 10 days of quarantine ahead. Ten days. And this time because I was actually sick, not because I was trying to protect family members.

I didn’t know what to think. After spending the past 19 months making sacrifices and isolating myself in order to avoid this…it had finally caught up to me.

Many people have asked me what the worst part of this experience was. I can say, without a doubt, that the night I had a fever was one of the worst bouts of illness I have ever had. Did I use the word “agony”? Yes, I think so. But I’m not sure even that covers it.

In the days since my test, the biggest challenges have been the fatigue and “fuzzy brain.” I only have a short window of time in midday when I feel a normal level of energy. Mornings take twice as long as usual to get going, and I’m typically ready for bed by 6PM. And I can’t even count the amount of times I have started to say or do something only to forget just seconds later.

But honestly, the hardest part has been the psychological toll of it. It was grueling and intense when I was in the thick of it. And finding out it was Covid made me very anxious about every single symptom and their long-term effects.

I also felt overwhelmed with what I can only call despair that I had worked so hard and made so many sacrifices to avoid this…only to get it because of one (perhaps foolish) decision. I have isolated myself in ways that most people have not, for the good of my vulnerable family members.

And then…it just happened. Like I suppose it will happen for a lot of people. Perhaps it is inevitable at this point.

I’m grateful that I was vaccinated. I fear how much worse this could have been had I not been.

I suppose I’m even grateful that I got through it by myself — another test of a single woman’s fortitude. That had been my greatest fear in this pandemic: to become ill here in my house, all alone, knowing no one could take care of me. Being single is great, but there are a few things that explicitly suck about it and getting severely ill is one of them.

And yet…I made it. I made it through that horrible night. I made it through days of having to drag myself out of bed and cook for myself. I made it through the fear of what might happen if I got any worse. I made it through the pain.

I’d like to think I’m doubly immune now, thanks to the vaccine and my exposure to the virus. But we all know that Covid is way too unpredictable to rely upon that. So I will continue to be careful.

But I think my days of making extreme pandemic sacrifices are over.

And I’ll definitely skip any future visits with people who have fevers, no matter how much I love them.

© Yael Wolfe 2021

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