Positive
My girlfriend and I tested positive for COVID two weeks ago; we got tested on the morning of Tuesday Jan. 26 at an NYC H&H site, and got our results on Wednesday evening (Jan. 27). We both had mild cases (technically speaking) and are doing OK now, but we arenāt back at 100% yet, and are definitely still sicker than weād like to be/than you might expect. (BTW, here's a list of everything we found helpful when dealing with our mild COVID cases.)
Hereās what the past couple of weeks have been like.
Where we got it
We truly donāt know how we got sick. My girlfriend barely leaves our apartment; I leave it daily to take Chuck out, which makes pinpointing a specific day when I could have gotten sick difficult. My route outside through the building is very brief: down one very short hallway, down a flight of stairs, past two elevators, down a corridor and outside ā it probably takes 90 seconds, tops, from door to door. I rarely encounter other humans (I wait for people to exit if I hear voices) and I definitely donāt encounter unmasked people at close range. Whenever we leave the apartment, weāre always wearing masks that have filters in them. (I think we started double-masking a day or two after I likely got infected, and our better masks only arrived this weekend.) We havenāt been in any businesses in months.
To give you an example of how much weāve avoided any sort of contact: at the end of December, our carās battery died and needed to be replaced, so we had it towed to the nearest dealership and when it was ready to pick it up, we made the 90 minute walk to Queens to avoid public transportation or an Uber. If we order takeout, we put the food in the oven before eating it to be extra careful, and we let groceries sit (either in our entryway or in fridge drawers) for a day or two before using them. We havenāt done masked or unmasked hangouts or anything that even comes close to the CDCās definition of āclose contact.ā In the timeframe in which we would have gotten infected, we hadnāt even checked the mail.
So, right now, our best guess is that I got it taking Chuck outside ā maybe someone coughed or sneezed unmasked in the hallway, and I had the unfortunate luck to walk through it a minute later. (Surface transfer seems unlikely given our rigorous handwashing practices and the fact that I wear gloves out now that itās winter. Itās also pretty rare in general.) It seems quite possible that the more contagious variant had something to do with it, and a lot of people in our building donāt appear to be particularly cautious. (Last night, for example, two people on our floor, including our next-door neighbors, were hosting parties.) I donāt know how I got COVID, and Iāll never know. Itās frustrating, given how cautious weāve been, but our caution likely also kept me from getting sicker or getting sick sooner, which matters a lot.
Physical symptoms
The first sign that something was wrong was Friday night (Jan. 22), when I did three (3) mild, dry coughs. Then I coughed mildly all day Saturday, probably a few times an hour. I also had a really itchy mouth and nose; Iād had two bad allergy moments during the week (on Tues and Thurs) that seemed pretty clearly tied to my kicking up a bunch of dog hair and dust, and our apartment felt especially dusty overall, so it made sense to me that I was still experiencing weird indoor allergies. I felt a bit low-energy but not awful. I took it verrrrry easy just to be on the safe side ā no workouts or walks or anything like that. I also took my temperature throughout the day and it was normal.
On Sunday when I woke up, my tongue felt a bit weird, and suddenly I had the thought, Oh no, is this me losing my sense of taste and smell? so I immediately went to the bathroom and smelled some deodorant and tasted the mint toothpaste; everything was fine/normal. It made me think that the sensation in my mouth was likely itchiness (especially because my nose/ears were still itching a lot). Throughout the day Sunday, I coughed a bit less than Saturday, but my cough wasn't all gone. Around noon, I managed to get the last drops of my usual prescription allergy nasal spray into my nose and I felt WORLDS better within an hour, which made sense to me given my allergy symptoms throughout the weekend. I took it easy again all day, and had a remote One Medical appointment that night. They refilled my nasal spray and didn't seem at all concerned that it could be COVID; they said that I had likely inhaled dust or some other allergen, and thatās why I was having an ongoing reaction.
That Monday, I woke up feeling pretty fine/normal ā maybe a little slow moving, but nothing noteworthy. I think I coughed two or three times during the day. But around 2:00 in the afternoon, I had another bad allergic reaction feeling all of a sudden ā I was super sneezy, really itchy, etc. This isnāt wildly uncommon for me, though itās usually triggered by outdoor allergens. I decided to take the rest of the afternoon off of work because I was just really dragging ass. My allergy meds weren't doing much for me at this point, and I also started taking Advil because I had a headache. As the night went on, I felt low-energy with a lot of increasing sinus pressure and congestion; I was congested enough at that point to have to start breathing through my mouth.
The most concerning thing was that my girlfriend woke up Monday feelingā¦off. She felt really fatigued and had body aches from her back downward; it was bad enough that she took a sick day. By Monday evening, we both had symptoms that were identical to all the symptoms of allergies/sinus infection on every website we looked at (and we looked at...many websites) as well as cold symptoms, so we went back and forth between thinking we had COVID and thinking it was something else.
Around 10:30 that night, I looked at my girlfriend, who had been feeling progressively worse (she said her legs felt ālike someone had taken a hammer to themā). Suddenly she went from looking sick to looking BAD ā there was absolutely no color in her face, and she was really weak. She had been taking her temperature all day ā we both had ā and it was still normal, but this was the point where I started to feel really worried. Around 1 a.m., she woke me up and her skin was hot to the touch; throughout the day, Iād been putting my hand on her forehead to see if she felt warm, and every time, was kind of like, I donāt know what Iām feeling for here??? But at that moment, I was like, Oh, I donāt need a thermometer to tell me that this isnāt normal. And then a thermometer confirmed that her temperature had indeed spiked (I believe it was 100.4), which was really alarming and upsetting.
The next morning, her fever was gone, and she had a remote appointment at 7:30 a.m. with someone from OneMedical, who diagnosed her with sinusitis and prescribed an antibiotic. Their general attitude was kind of like, Sure, you can get a COVID test if you want toā¦ I think because our contact with people was so nonexistent. They didnāt even say it could be the flu. At this point, we just wanted to know for sure as soon as possible, so we drove over to the nearest H&H site as soon as it opened and got tested for the first time ever.
We both felt pretty bad throughout the day on Tuesday; my nose started running a ton after we got home from our testing appointment, and I went between having a really runny nose and feeling really congested. (I went through nearly an entire box of Kleenex from Tuesday to Wednesday.) I had a lot of sinus pressure and itchiness in my face, and overall felt like I had a really bad cold. My sense of taste and smell was fine, but was also not AMAZING due to all the congestion. We just tried to drink fluids and rest (we both took the day off work), and both used our respective neti pots a couple times to relieve the sinus pressure (which helped a lot), along with taking DayQuil.
Wednesday was another day of feeling crappy. I felt like I had a bad cold or sinus infection: stuffy nose, runny nose, bad congestion, headache, some coughing, etc. I also got my period, which is fucking criminal. I was trying to stay optimistic because sinus pressure wasnāt listed anywhere as a common COVID symptom, but it was just impossible to say for sure what was going on, or to think we would be spared getting COVID when things are so bad. We finally got our test results around 5:50 p.m. on Wednesday night, and had both tested positive.
We each had separate appointments with different providers at One Medical that night, and I talked to my aunt, a nurse who has been working with COVID patients since last March. A lot of similar themes emerged (and we heard the same stuff the next day from the person who called us from the city): treat the symptoms; rest and take it very easy; take zinc, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, and magnesium; take deep yoga breaths; and look for signs that things were getting worse. The main thing we were told to look for was trouble breathing; the person I talked to at One Medical said that itās OK if youāre out of breath because you got up to do something around the house, but if you sit down and still canāt catch your breath, thatās a problem. (We also heard mixed things about using a pulse oximeter, but did end up using ours to monitor ourselves.)
Right after the results came through, we told our families and friends about the diagnosis, and made arrangements for our friends Doug and Nathalie to pick Chuck up (no-contact) to watch him for the duration of our isolation. Saying good-bye to Chuck was hard; it was just one of those moments when things felt very real and very sad. We also missed him a lot while we were sick. (Meanwhile, he thrived at Doug and Nathalieās.)
From there, we just hunkered down and rode it out. We were told to rest and to not take a day of feeling good as license to start doing chores or anything like that, which I think is good advice. We spent the entire duration of our isolation in bed watching The Sopranos and Real Housewives of New York, coughing and blowing our noses and taking meds and drinking fluids and mouth-breathing and doing frequent symptom check-ins and temperature checks. Our cases were similar but different; my girlfriendās had more highs and lows (and she was sicker than I was), while mine was more consistently medium-shitty. I also was two days ahead of her in terms of symptoms; for example, I lost my senses of taste and smell first and then, two days later, hers started to go.
Even though our cases were technically mild, they werenāt a walk in the park by any means, and weāre both still sick, and sicker than you might expect two weeks after catching something cold-like. Both of us still need meds (DayQuil or Advil Cold & Sinus) to treat our symptoms. (Our senses of smell and taste seem to be returning though, which is a relief.) Iāll do a separate post with the things that helped us the most/things I wish Iād known, because that was the kind of thing I wanted to read when we got sick, but I was also afraid to go looking for too much information, lest I give myself a panic attack.
Aside from the physical symptoms, we were dealing with major anxiety and fear that things would take a turn for the worst at any minute ā something weād been reading about happening for the past 10 months. Every time Iād think, OK, Iām not feeling so bad, Iād start to wonder if it was the last day of my life, if Iād already been outside for the final time in my 35 years. I was glad Iād updated my will (a long overdue task Iād been putting off for a while) at the beginning of January so I didnāt have to do it while sick. My girlfriend and I set alarms every night to wake up and check on each other. It was incredibly dark and grim and the kind of thing that really separates COVID from every cold or flu Iāve ever had, even if the symptoms were ultimately pretty similar.
My girlfriend and I were lucky, but for no apparent reason; other people our age, similarly healthy, have not been as lucky. Itās really difficult to process that. As I lay in bed, I couldnāt help but think about Dez-Ann Romain, a healthy 36-year-old high school principal who died in April. I never saw surviving COVID as a sure thing. I still wonder if there are long-term effects lurking.
Final thoughts
Weāre so close to being through this pandemic, but itās not over yet, and by all accounts, everyoneās behavior for the next few months matters a lot, especially as the vaccine rollout lags. āWe are in a race against time, and the virus appears to be gaining an unfortunate ability to sprint just as we get closer to the finish line,ā Zeynep Tufekci wrote in The Atlantic five weeks ago. And just this week, I read this in a different Atlantic article: āAt the same time, the more transmissible B.1.1.7 strain of the virus is becoming more prevalent in the U.S.; early evidence suggests that it may harm young people and women more than the dominant coronavirus strains do. The strain will eventually dominate the U.S., Andersen told me: āItās not an if; itās a when.ā
I was in bed, sick, when I read that indoor dining is re-opening at 25% ā on Valentineās Day, so people can propose, Governor Cuomo joked (?????????????). I was in bed, sick, when, a few days later, he said that the calls to vaccinate restaurant workers as part of that were ācheap, insincere discussion.ā (He has since reversed course, but it doesnāt change that he thought that and said that.) I felt such white-hot rage in that moment. Every time I think about it, I feel sick to my stomach.
I cannot overstate how normal and healthy I felt the days I would have been the most contagious. I had plenty of energy, I worked out, I ate and slept normally ā nothing seemed amiss. If I was doing outdoor dining or seeing a few close friends or family members unmasked, I absolutely would have done it when I was super contagious without a second thought, especially given how cautious weād been in the weeks and months before it.
Itās really difficult to conceive of not knowing what is happening in your own body at a given moment, or to believe that you could be contagious when you donāt seem contagious or sick at all. Itās even harder to believe this if youāre not doing things you deem risky...and I donāt think most people are doing things they deem risky; I think most of us are doing things that fit our personal definition of āsafe.ā Weāre doing the things weāve been doing for months now, the things that, for whatever reason ā and lower case numbers can play a really big role here ā have seemingly kept us safe the whole time. But that is the reality of this virus: the day you got infected might not be obvious or knowable, and by the time you know youāre sick, itāll likely be too late for you to protect other people.
Literally everyone we told we had COVID had the same reaction: āYou guys are the most cautious people I know.ā While I know that might make it seem like getting sick is random and happens no matter what youāve been doing, thus, Fuck it, letās go out to dinner, I donāt think thatās the right takeaway here at all. To me, itās that the more contagious variant is spreading and we donāt know how dominant it is, but we do know that case numbers are still really, really high around the U.S., and everyone who can needs to lock it down. Look at being safe thus far as a gift, not a guarantee.
