Covid is still hanging around in 2023, years after it went through the world and changed everything on this planet. I had it 6 months ago or so and it was the worst hell I’d encountered since the winter of 2013 when I had a similar virus that acted literally the same as Covid reacted on me 6 months ago. This of course led me to believe that Covid in its current form has actually been around a lot longer than we currently knew. But that’s just the ramblings of someone who had it and suffered from it. Which brings me up to my next point.
I got Covid again and am now on day 4 of it. I think day 1 is oh shit, I got something brewing here. Sore throat, sneezing a lot, congestion starting etc. Day 2, full on, you know you got it, and you know it’s going to suck. Day 3 is full bore, you got it all and there is no escape from it save death. Day 4 you’re pretty much going down the path of either or. You’re either going to make it or you are going to break it. Day 4 is like you know you’re getting better, slowly, but still you can feel that your body is going to let you make it. You still feel like total shit, but you manage to get a few hours of sleep here and there. I went 3 solid days of zero sleep. Not one moment of sleep.
You can’t sleep, there just isn’t any way to manage it. I was so loopy at about 70 hours of no sleep that I thought I would collapse just from that alone. I was hallucinating, seeing stuff moving when it wasn’t. Fighting with various people on social media platforms for God knows what reason, I just had no concept of time or anything else. My brain had ceased to function, and throughout all the coughing attacks, the gaging from it, the nose draining like a broken water pump, there was just nothing left at that point. Finally, through a combination of Vicks shoved up my nose and some strange drug cocktails of paracetamol and antihistamines like Zyrtec and some other stuff, I fell asleep. And I slept for 12 solid hours.
As of now, I’m still wobbly when I stand up as I sway back and forth like I’m drunk or something. My nose cooperates and then suddenly it doesn’t. The cough, oh let me tell you of the coughing. The first bout of Covid, I felt like a piece of metal had come apart in my stomach, and every time I coughed it ripped a new muscle. And I’m speak of ripping, as in, something is taking a knife and cutting you up inside piece by piece. And every cough I had a new piece that would tear or get sliced.
The coughing this time is bad, but so far, no muscles are getting sliced apart on every cough. And the coughs come every minute or so for as long as you are awake. When you are unable to lay down or sleep, well, you have your lungs to thank for giving you something to do, which is cough, cough, cough. At some point your body gets so tired of the coughing that you begin to think you’re at the gym working out, but not just for an hour, but all day and all night, and day after grueling day. At some point you can’t wait for the end of it to come. The days also move slowly, and all you can manage to do is sit up halfway and beg for a few minutes of sleep.
As for screen time, a phone is ok, but this computer screen is very bright, and when you have Covid, bright screens HURT like hell. And the longer you sit at the screen, the more you cough all over it and the more your nose drips everywhere. So, you have to carry a drip rag with you to keep the drainage from dripping everywhere. It’s really a sick process. But hey, your infected with Covid, and you are sick, so yeah, the processes are really gross.
How did I manage to get it again? The first time I had a KN95 mask on and it was a good tight fit. I walked into some guy coughing and I knew I should have turned around as I saw it, but I walked right through it instead. A day later boom, Covid hits. I was pissed, I had a tight mask on, after I walked through that cough, I checked it. I was thinking oh man, glad it’s tight, so that should save me. But it didn’t save me at all. And right then, after years of masking up, I finally realized that these fucking masks really don’t work. It’s an illusion of safety. I believed in it rather strongly, and I never went anywhere without one. But when push came to shove the mask abandoned me.
Some said, well it must have gone through your eyes. I’m like dude, please, if that’s true (which it was) then I’d have to wear goggles too. And I just can’t go out looking like that. Anyway, after I recovered, I lost my fear of Covid, I stopped watching the news of it, I stopped caring about it and moved on with my life. And I stopped wearing masks. It wasn’t going to help me, and so there was no point to it at all. That doesn’t make me an anti-masker, but at least for me (others are different) it didn’t work, and I trusted it and it failed me.
So here I am again. And I wondered ok, how did I get it this time? Well, I was in a mall picking up some sheets and it just so happened to be back to school weekend and the place was packed to the rafters. Then I had to do a small grocery run after it, and of course that place was packed to the rafters as well. Then I came home. So, it was one of those places. I didn’t get coughed on or really see any evidence of anything amiss, but I guess today you never really get to see that. It’s a silent thing, it can get you no matter what.
Summing up, I’d have to say that I will have to make some changes in my routines. There are waves of covid circulating right now, and once again it’s highly contagious. So, I guess I will have to go back to mask wearing in any large crowds. It may not be effective, but then again, it may help to ward off the random demon swirling around a large, crowded gathering. I thought about just never going out again and going back to my recluse days where I never left the house, never went anywhere, never saw anyone, and never allowed anyone within 50 feet of me.
But those days were truly dark for me. Yes, I was going to be free from Covid getting me, and as long as I could give up people, freedom to move about, and never leave my house, I’d be OK. But none of us can truly live that way forever. Because to do that you’d have built yourself a nice prison cell, and then put yourself into it. So, I chose to go out after the pandemic pretty much ended, and I have never looked back. But I’ve now had Covid twice in 6 months, and I’ve read of people getting it way more than that. So, I guess this means that this new world is going to get us one way or the other. We can’t escape it so why even try? Just go live your life and realize that while living it you are going to get sick many times throughout the year. Vaccinated or not, you’re going to get SICK, SICK, SICK!!! So, get used to it and try to find joy when you aren’t sick.
I will post more over the next few days as I get back to normal as this leaves my body. This prose took me a very long time to write, and I now have to go take this other combo drug which is supposed to be similar to the green liquid Nyquil and knock me out and put me to sleep. I just saw this keyboard move lol. It really did, there was something on it like a big bug, but when I moved my eyes to it, it disappeared. It’s weird stuff like that.
I want to do more, there is a lot to discuss and talk over. Yet, I think I need one or maybe two days more to get this out of me.
Until then, be well, mask up in crowds, and enjoy your life as it comes.
