I didn’t realize it then. It was Day One. I had a sudden craving for sweets. So, I found myself engulfing a handful of mini-Snickers, one after another. I thought it strange to myself in that I am not a sugar person. Soon after my throat became soar and I began to get a headache, another condition I am not prone to endure. By the evening, when I started to feel chills, I knew I had fed something not good in my system to just get stronger. And it did, the crowned virus had opened the gates to COVID-19.
I did not need to use a thermometer to know I was running a fever. By that night, my body and muscles ached, but I pushed through to the next day, even managing to remotely teach the following morning. In fact, teaching on camera the entire week was what got me out of bed where I found no comfort in sleeping or just simply lying down.
By mid-week I had noticed a loss in my taste buds and sense of smell. Strangely, I had not lost my appetite, but could only find comfort in fruits, juices, and soups, the sourness of each that satiated my desperation to taste ANYTHING. Everything else, I can only describe, gave off a taste of sulfur, like eating a match. The smell of anything gave off a somewhat ammonia, head-spinning smell. Additionally, because of the headaches and chills, my perception was clearly skewed- the depth of even my fingers looking longer and disconnected from my body. Lighting around me seemed more yellow than I was used to. At times, I wanted to gouge my eyes out for they felt achingly heavy, perhaps the pressure from what I called the finale, phlegm buildup in my lungs that led to immense difficulty in breathing. At this point, about the fifth day, breathing was beyond uneasy. Phlegm had definitely filled my lungs, creating unsatisfactory, hollow breathing. I managed to take it easy when teaching before not wanting to talk all day, feeling as if talking and breathing could not coincide within my ease to live. In fact, by this time, I started to seriously think perhaps I should admit myself to the hospital as I could see my lips at one point were becoming dark and blue. However, I read how hospitals were becoming full and I thought to myself, ‘I will get through this-hospitals need to be for the youngest and the oldest right now.’ My body must have waited for a day I didn’t need to directly teach on camera because breathing, however hollow or short, was my focus for that one full day. Thankfully I had read an article that sleeping on your stomach would help to alleviate pressure from your lungs. This helped, along with propping myself up to almost a 90 degrees angle with a pillow when laying on my stomach became unbearable for my arched back.
These line of episodes lasted for over ten days from the onset of symptoms. Strangely, one symptom I had not read from any articles are the dead skin cells I found myself rubbing off in the shower from my face to feet. I had never had to exfoliate that much dead skin layers within the last few days of the symptoms.
Once tested positive, I was told that I would no longer be contagious after ten days from the onset of symptoms, but with the way I was still feeling and personally believing that the SARS-CoV-2 was still at an infantile stage in research, I continued to quarantine myself, even wearing a mask around the house. I would say that complete clearance from full-blown COVID-19 lasted for 2 complete weeks for me. I remember embracing the moment in the shower where I could feel I was back, breathing normally again. Even then, my body told me it was not time to hit the gym back again just yet. Still, I had overcome a tough battle. I was at peace with just taking “me” easy.
With the wonderful help of my husband who got me juices, soups, and even hot Cheetos whenever I asked, the fight to get through what seemed like one after another episodes of various quite unbearable symptoms, I can only say that I would not wish COVID-19 on anyone. I am grateful to God for the strength I was given to overcome, as I held myself to be testimony of, a virus that is out to steal, kill, and destroy. I am so deeply humbled from such an experience and pray for strength and a speedy recovery for anyone else who has to overcome such a challenge and fight.
