First of all – sorry for the clickbait-type title – it really isn’t meant to be that… I just had no other title to explain it LOL! This was also 3 months ago now – so it’s been a while but I’m only now having a chance to write this.

On March 16th – I wrote this post
https://lifewithjson.com/2020/03/16/covid-19-i-have-time-to-write/

And we’re coming up really close on a year to it now – time flies when you’re in isolation, right? Back then, we were really starting to get a taste of COVID-19 and it’s the fear of it that really fueled that post. Fear of illness, fear of racism, fear of a lot of things because we just didn’t know anything about it.

Fast forward to today and all we’ve really heard and talked about these last few months has been the number of cases each city has, how many deaths have occurred and where is the light at the end of the tunnel? I’m feel like I’m really going out on a limb to talk about this because it really has been pretty taboo to talk about. You really hope no one you know gets it and you certainly hope that you don’t get it and it’s taboo because unlike other illnesses, COVID-19 seems to carry around this negative stigma that doesn’t go away long after COVID-19 has and that sucks. We’ve been inundated with a lot of fear – political fear, health fear, fear of so many things that we just don’t understand… To the point where we’re all just kind of nervous little pack rats doing our best to avoid what we don’t know. And believe me, that’s totally fair and I totally get it.

I want to start by saying that I’m no anti-vaxxer or anti-masker or anti-anything. I stand on the side that believes that whatever needs to be done to make everyone and everything better is what needs to be done. There’s a lot of fueled debate about a lot of really ridiculous things but we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about what my life was like with COVID-19. By doing this, I open myself and my family up to criticism and I’m well aware of that. From day one, we have been as careful as we could be – masks all the time, hand sanitizer constantly and in every corner of every reachable space, staying home when we had to – every rule followed to the T and I’ve come to the conclusion that no matter how careful and safe you are, you can still get it if you still need to go out. Let’s all agree that being holed up in your house for 9 months is impossible without going insane. Even if I were single and lived on my own with no one else to care for, I couldn’t imagine entertaining myself day in and day out while making sure every need of mine was also being taken care of.

Anyone who is still negative can probably say either A – they’ve been super careful and they’re never gonna get it or B – they’ve been lucky so far and hope they don’t get it. Different story if you just don’t believe in it at all… But that’s a debate for another day… Up until the day we tested positive, going through the routine of ensuring everything was clean and sanitized became a pretty natural habit. It was nice to feel safe and to feel like we were doing our part in staying germ and COVID-free. We’d go and get tested when we thought we might have been exposed and it was an anxious waiting game to get the results back and a relief when it came back negative.

One day, Diana woke up and said her body was feeling super sore and she just felt tired and fatigued. She took an Advil, felt better and brushed it off and we thought nothing of it. Maybe just an off day. I felt fine and the kids were still good and fever-free. The next day, Diana felt the same, took an Advil and she felt a bit better again but we just decided to get her tested just in case. It’s not until you start getting symptoms that you start to get a little more worried about your test results than when you just get tested just to make sure you don’t have it. You know when you look at mayoclinic for symptoms and find out you’re actually dying from your sore joints? It’s like that.

Fast forward. Diana is positive. The literal world felt like it was crumbling around us. What do we do? Are we going to die? Are the kids OK? Do they have it? Do I have it? We let it stew for a little bit and we come to the conclusion that “it is what it is” and there’s nothing more to do other than to just get through it. We just be careful with the kids and sanitize everything and ultimately at this point, there’s probably a good chance we all have it too. If you haven’t thought about this – here’s a little (obvious) food for thought: If you have COVID-19 and have symptoms and then get tested – there’s a good chance anyone who has been in contact with you prior to getting tested have it too if you share anything or live in any close contact unless they’re extremely lucky. The unfortunate thing about COVID-19 (or any illness for that matter) is that by the time you find out anything about it, you’ve probably given it to someone close to you. It is an unfortunate truth.

4 days later, I wake up and I feel like I just got hit by a bus. I do not want to wake up, I do not want to move and I feel like I just went through a full body workout circuit with Arnold Schwarzenegger after never training in my life and my head is pounding. That’s what day 1 feels like.  I take an Advil and it brings me to about 85% to get me through the day. At this point, I’m pretty confident I am positive and Diana confirms she felt the same way. The kids are still at level 10000% energy and now we’re just careful not to kiss or share anything with them. Another thing that seems mind-blowing to me is AHS tells you if a family member has it – isolate them in a room and disinfect everything for 14 days. In theory this makes perfect sense – keep the virus away from everyone but what do you do when the people that have it need to take care of their own kids? You keep taking care of the kids and accept the brutal fact that they might get it as well. We can’t not take care of our kids because of COVID. Life doesn’t work that way.

Day 2 – still sore. Head still pounding. Fatigue still very much there but no other symptoms exist. There was no fever, there was no sore throat or stuffy nose or cough. Take an Advil, get on with the day.

Day 3 – this is when things start to get a little better. The soreness starts to go away, the headache is gone but the fatigue just eats away at you. You just want to lay but the kids just don’t want to let you mother f***ing lay, so you don’t lay.

Day 4 – The only thing that’s sticking around now is fatigue. You just feel tired all the time and Advil is still the only thing getting you through the day. I learned really quickly that staying on top of Advil (or Tylenol) is the key to helping you survive, especially if you have things to do, like take care of kids that don’t want to let you lay.

Day 5 and onward – your taste goes away and your sense of smell goes away but you don’t have a stuffy/runny nose or anything that would usually accompany the two senses… It’s really the weirdest thing that I’ve never experienced before. Eating is really boring because you can’t taste anything and you can’t even smell it to half enjoy the food. A persistent cough came and it just kind of sticks around and the only thing that calms it down is lozenges or honey lemon tea. You don’t need Advil anymore because everything else is good.

After that, everything is on the up and up. I will say that COVID-19 is unlike anything that I’ve experienced before. It’s very similar to the flu like everyone says but I think we were lucky that we had the mild end of it all because of the lack of a fever and any respiratory issues. It hits your body hard on the first two days but after that, it just takes time and rest. I understand why it sucks because it’s not a cake walk like a simple cold is. We spent a lot of time at home just to make sure everyone got out their quarantine days and that’s the next real killer – literally doing nothing and touching nothing to make sure you don’t spread it anywhere else.

My final thoughts on it all – for what it’s worth – I’m unusually happy we got it and that it’s over. Don’t get me wrong, we were never trying to get it and we certainly didn’t want it either but going through it really helps put it into perspective in a lot of ways. As I mentioned at the beginning, fear fuels a lot of what COVID is and it certainly was scary to us. We’re thankful that we didn’t suffer from it and that we got through it together and we’re thankful that it’s over with nothing more than a little bit of inconvenience. We’re still totally all about wearing masks and sanitizing (even more so now) because we absolutely do not want to go through that shit again. I hope anyone that has had it doesn’t go through life thinking they’re all good now…

The stigma that’s attached to it is really the unfortunate thing about it all. We’re thankful for the people that trusted we did what needed to be done to make sure we kept everyone else safe. Altogether, we were in isolation for almost a month just to make sure everyone was all clear… It felt like a luxurious prison in the sense that we still roamed freely around the house with no metal bars and fear of dropping soap, but I’ll be damned if I have to go through that shit again.