Covid Struck Again

Well, it finally happened. Covid struck our house again. My oldest son (16) tested positive on a Friday morning. The day before he had been a little pale and was complaining of a stuffy head and his throat hurting. It just so happened to be the last day of school so I thought he was just tired and exhausted from finals and the relief of the school year being over. Regardless, we decided to test him and turned out he was positive.

We felt so bad for him. The day before his symptom onset had been his birthday and we had all kinds of fun planned. As soon as he tested positive it sent our household into a whirlwind. We are a two-household family since his dad and I are divorced so the first call was to let the other household know. This entailed all three kiddos staying in our home and being quarantined. Our trip to the lake was canceled, a paintball event was canceled, as well as an off-shore fishing trip. All the fun end-of-the-year and birthday activities, poof. Everyone was so disappointed. That wasn't the end of it though.

The next day after my son tested positive I woke up with a sore throat and a headache. I tested negative Saturday and Sunday. On both days my symptoms worsened. I was extremely tired, I had lost my appetite, had a low-grade fever, and just felt crummy. Monday morning I woke up and started throwing up and I couldn't stop. I called my doctor and he prescribed some Zofran and Paxlovid. I couldn't hold down water, I would drink a few sips while holding the trashcan knowing what was coming. The Zofran helped immediately once in my system, but it didn't last.

By Tuesday evening I was throwing up again and I had the absolute worst migraine of my life. I literally felt like someone was stabbing my head. I'm prone to migraines due to light sensitivity so I have a routine down pretty good once I feel the onset. Since I had a headache since Saturday, nothing I normally did was working. I can usually put a damp washrag over my eyes, take a nap in a dark, quiet room, and wake up good as new. I also have migraine meds that usually can knock it out within 30 minutes, but I couldn't keep any meds down. I had been sleeping for a few days. I literally was in bed around the clock sleeping only to wake up to try and drink fluids. I tried water, Gatorade, Pedialyte, and tea; but nothing was working.

By Wednesday evening my pain had reached an extreme, I was still not holding anything down. Once my face, arms, and hands started tingling and feeling numb I knew it was time to go to the hospital. I told my husband it was time to go and he knew it was then time to start worrying. I don't remember going to the hospital, getting there, or being there. My husband replayed everything to me a few days later. He said the nurses told him that anyone who gets migraines has had an extremely difficult time during covid. For a number of reasons, the usual symptoms are amplified and hard to control. Dehydration was a factor that amplified everything even more.

Multiple medications through IV were prescribed. My husband said I was knocked out the entire time, and I honestly cannot remember it. The only thing I remember is getting help being walked out of the emergency room and seeing blood drops on the floor. I don't remember the trip home, but I do remember quite literally crawling in bed.

From then on I recovered at a snail's pace. I would feel like I was getting better but an hour later would be falling asleep uncontrollably. The day after coming home from the hospital my taste buds started acting up. I didn't lose my taste, but everything tasted absolutely horrible. It was like having the worst taste in your mouth no matter how many times you brushed your teeth or what you ate or drank. Soup tasted funny, toast tasted funny, and water even tasted weird. I felt like the little girl from the movie, Signs, who said, "It's contaminated" when she drank water. I think the taste bud issue was from the covid meds, Paxlovid. Those meds were no joke! Three pills in the morning and three in the evening for five days.

Once I was done with the Paxlovid covid meds I started to slowly feel a little normal. My taste returned and my headache was gone. It took about a week taking it slow. I am a virtual executive assistant and work for the most awesome company. (You should definitely check out Campus Ink!) I was able to recover without worrying about work because I work for a company that is family. I would wake up and work an hour in bed and have to take a nap. Wake up and do a little more until I was too tired and I would sleep some more.

My son is a runner and it took him about a week to get back into shape with running. He would run and his chest would start to hurt or he would feel like he was going to throw up. He's back to running 5-10 miles and I joke with him because I think if I ran anywhere near that distance it would be perfectly normal to feel like I was going to throw up! We are back to normal and "normal" has never felt so good. We all know it could have been way scarier and way worse than it was. We were all on edge from our experience earlier in the school year when our daughter gave us a huge scare. You can find that post here. Seeing our perfectly healthy daughter drop and have a seizure all due to covid made us extremely cautious in how we navigated quarantine.

My husband stepped up to the plate and handled it and I love him so much. Everyone was quarantined in their rooms. No one entered my room and if they had to, they wore a mask. Same for my son. My husband slept on the couch for ten days. It was rough. You can say we overreacted but if he got sick we were all screwed. He took on the role of caretaker to me and my son, as well as the normal day-to-day with the other two kiddos. We did what we had to do. Did we like it? Hell no, but they were precautions we had to follow.

You might be asking why I've told you my story. Well, that's because there are so many moving parts to everything surrounding covid and it's hard to know what to trust. I figure from sharing our experiences, it will help to better inform anyone who is willing to read and learn. No one needs anyone's opinions unless they are asked for them. Nothing you have read was an opinion, it was a first-hand account. If you have any questions please ask!

I hope you and your family stay safe and well!