Covid in the time of Covid (The Coronavirus Diaries, Part XXIX)
Coronavirus long ago left pandemic mode and moved into endemic mode. We had a pleasant summer with a mix of indoor and outdoor activities. Then, over Labor Day weekend all three of us caught covid for the first time ever and were knocked out for various lengths of time. A general timeline, with the caveat that it's not like I took notes while I was sick, although it is me so you could be forgiven for thinking I had.
Saturday, September 2 - M starts to feel ill while we're at her sister's house for the Labor Day weekend.
Sunday, September 3 - M starts to feel seriously unwell so we drive home that night instead of staying through Labor Day as originally planned.
Monday, September 4 - M is pretty much down for the count for the first of about 4 days. She tests positive. At this point, I'm fine and Birdie is fine, so M goes to bed and we stay home. Birdie watches a lot of Bluey while I have work meetings; she undoubtedly sets a personal record for number of episodes of Bluey watched in a single day later in the week when M and I get sick.
Over the next several days M has a bunch of the classic covid symptoms, most notably a really sore throat, some congestion and a fever. She had one visit to urgent care, but she as already outside the Paxlovid (aka, the miracle covid drug) window. She is more or less functional again 3 days later; she was definitely not at 100% but she could take care of Birdie when I went down.
Wednesday, September 5 - Birdie starts showing some minor symptoms. Honestly, she was mostly fine and her usual self. She did adorably lose her voice for a bit, but after 2 or 3 days she was back to normal, and at no point was she ever as sick as M or I got.
Thursday, September 7 - M starts to be functional, but I go down hard. Fevers and chills, a terrible painful cough, I had them all. I'm basically non-functional for the better part of a week and a half. To put that in perspective, at my old job I took 9.5 sick days in just shy of 21 years, two of which were for Birdie. Here, I certainly would have had to take at least 6 sick days and even at the tail end of my illness around September 18, I still didn't feel great. I joined some work meetings along the way, but was basically told "go to bed, you look terrible." They were not wrong.
I had two trips to urgent care. I was told I wasn't eligible for Paxlovid at the first appointment, but they did give me two prescriptions. Neither helped. On my visit to a different urgent care, they basically told me that the Albuteral prescription I'd been given wasn't appropriate for covid unless I had asthma, which I do not. This probably explains why it didn't seem to make any difference at all. The other prescription as a cough suppressant that didn't work. Thankfully, at my second urgent care appointment they gave me a prescription for some medicated cough syrup, and let me tell you that stuff is the bomb. I finally got some sleep with that, and happily used the cough syrup for another two weeks just to be on the safe side.
Monday, September 25 - This was around when I got to 100% again.
So that was our inaugural covid experience. If you were going to draw it up, having Birdie be least sick and me most sick was probably the way to do it, which didn't make it any more pleasant. If being vaccinated reduced the symptoms, I'm sure glad I was vaccinated, because my bout with covid was already the sickest I've been in my adult life by a huge margin. Hopefully this painfully won immunity helps keep me from getting coivd again for some time to come.
As far as where we picked up covid, we're spoilt for choice. I was at The Baseball Project a week earlier, although none of my friends who were there reported getting sick. M and I went out for a excellent anniversary dinner at Pier W on August 25 (shout out to my fraternity brother Rob for the gift card he gave us a wedding present and we finally used!). We went to a big BBQ on the 26th, but nobody got sick there either, and neither did my parents, who came up to watch Birdie for our anniversary and for the BBQ. We've been doing some limited shopping indoors as well as some other indoor activities. The answer is fundamentally unknowable and unimportant.
Due to illness, M had to cancel a long-scheduled girls weekend where she and Kati were going to see The Breeders. I missed a baseball game, and then the following weekend I had to bow out of a minigolf day I'd personally scheduled for a group of friends. I also had to reschedule a dentist appointment twice because I hadn't pushed it back far enough and was still sick. And we were sufficiently ill that I didn't even feel all that bad about missing those events.
Saturday, September 2 - M starts to feel ill while we're at her sister's house for the Labor Day weekend.
Sunday, September 3 - M starts to feel seriously unwell so we drive home that night instead of staying through Labor Day as originally planned.
Monday, September 4 - M is pretty much down for the count for the first of about 4 days. She tests positive. At this point, I'm fine and Birdie is fine, so M goes to bed and we stay home. Birdie watches a lot of Bluey while I have work meetings; she undoubtedly sets a personal record for number of episodes of Bluey watched in a single day later in the week when M and I get sick.
Over the next several days M has a bunch of the classic covid symptoms, most notably a really sore throat, some congestion and a fever. She had one visit to urgent care, but she as already outside the Paxlovid (aka, the miracle covid drug) window. She is more or less functional again 3 days later; she was definitely not at 100% but she could take care of Birdie when I went down.
Wednesday, September 5 - Birdie starts showing some minor symptoms. Honestly, she was mostly fine and her usual self. She did adorably lose her voice for a bit, but after 2 or 3 days she was back to normal, and at no point was she ever as sick as M or I got.
Thursday, September 7 - M starts to be functional, but I go down hard. Fevers and chills, a terrible painful cough, I had them all. I'm basically non-functional for the better part of a week and a half. To put that in perspective, at my old job I took 9.5 sick days in just shy of 21 years, two of which were for Birdie. Here, I certainly would have had to take at least 6 sick days and even at the tail end of my illness around September 18, I still didn't feel great. I joined some work meetings along the way, but was basically told "go to bed, you look terrible." They were not wrong.
I had two trips to urgent care. I was told I wasn't eligible for Paxlovid at the first appointment, but they did give me two prescriptions. Neither helped. On my visit to a different urgent care, they basically told me that the Albuteral prescription I'd been given wasn't appropriate for covid unless I had asthma, which I do not. This probably explains why it didn't seem to make any difference at all. The other prescription as a cough suppressant that didn't work. Thankfully, at my second urgent care appointment they gave me a prescription for some medicated cough syrup, and let me tell you that stuff is the bomb. I finally got some sleep with that, and happily used the cough syrup for another two weeks just to be on the safe side.
Monday, September 25 - This was around when I got to 100% again.
So that was our inaugural covid experience. If you were going to draw it up, having Birdie be least sick and me most sick was probably the way to do it, which didn't make it any more pleasant. If being vaccinated reduced the symptoms, I'm sure glad I was vaccinated, because my bout with covid was already the sickest I've been in my adult life by a huge margin. Hopefully this painfully won immunity helps keep me from getting coivd again for some time to come.
As far as where we picked up covid, we're spoilt for choice. I was at The Baseball Project a week earlier, although none of my friends who were there reported getting sick. M and I went out for a excellent anniversary dinner at Pier W on August 25 (shout out to my fraternity brother Rob for the gift card he gave us a wedding present and we finally used!). We went to a big BBQ on the 26th, but nobody got sick there either, and neither did my parents, who came up to watch Birdie for our anniversary and for the BBQ. We've been doing some limited shopping indoors as well as some other indoor activities. The answer is fundamentally unknowable and unimportant.
Due to illness, M had to cancel a long-scheduled girls weekend where she and Kati were going to see The Breeders. I missed a baseball game, and then the following weekend I had to bow out of a minigolf day I'd personally scheduled for a group of friends. I also had to reschedule a dentist appointment twice because I hadn't pushed it back far enough and was still sick. And we were sufficiently ill that I didn't even feel all that bad about missing those events.