Theresa and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week (with Covid)
If you aren’t familiar with the Judith Viorst children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, I suggest you give it a read. The main character, Alexander, has a really bad day, which we can all relate to. At the end of the book, Alexander’s mother explains, “Some days are like that.”
My infection with Covid in late January was similarly terrible and horrible, but for a week, not a day, alas. Because I keep hearing about people testing positive for the virus I thought it might be helpful for me to describe what my second bout of Covid was like. In key ways it was different from my first case, confirming my impression that Covid accommodates all kinds of variations on “not normal” that are in fact normal for the situation.
I tested positive on a Sunday morning. Arthur and I went out to dinner the Saturday night before, and I felt not fully myself, but certainly not sick either, only a wee bit tired with not much appetite. The next morning I felt much more not myself and also sick, with chills and weakness that set in quickly after I got out of bed in the morning. “This doesn’t feel right,” I thought, and decided to test myself for Covid. The line for “test”—a positive indication—turned bright red as soon as the sample fluid hit it and I burst into tears, my typical response to being physically and emotionally overwhelmed with sudden severe sickness.
From then I went downhill quickly and also went upstairs to quarantine on our third floor. I didn’t have a terrible sore throat like I did last time I had Covid, but I had a horrible, no good cough with laryngitis, felt very weak, and had a very bad fever. Viruses struggle to survive at higher than normal human temperatures, making fever the body’s way of working to stop an invading virus. Knowing the curative power of elevated body temperature, I let the fever run its course during the day (which felt terrible and horrible) and took Tylenol at night to break the fever, allowing me to sleep.
I have never had a fever break so dramatically—it was no good and very bad. Two nights in a row I woke up soaking wet and chilled to the bone from night sweats, but I felt too weak to get up in the middle of the night and put dry sheets on the bed or dry pajamas on myself. I curled up, trying to ignore the cold when our dog, Pickles, came to my rescue. She curled up right next to me, providing enough warmth that I could fall back asleep despite being thoroughly chilled as a result of Covid and the damp pajamas I had on.
The Monday after I tested positive I started taking Paxlovid (the anti-viral medication for Covid), having found a way despite my lethargy and laryngitis to both call my doctor’s office and send a message to her over the patient portal. I’m sure Arthur would have been happy to do both those things for me, but I wasn’t thinking very clearly and as a result hyper-focused on what I could do. On a contrasting note, it took me three days to realize that I needed to put a message on my email saying that I had Covid and wouldn’t respond to messages quickly. I also didn’t wear my glasses during the first three days of having the virus because they felt too heavy for my face and too complicated. Glasses are a simple technology and yet their purpose eluded me.
After two days on Paxlovid I woke up feeling terribly, horribly dizzy. I tried to shake it off, but the feeling got worse and worse until I only felt safe sitting down. Thinking like a nurse, but unable to do a google search myself, I texted my daughter Miranda and asked her to look up whether dizziness was a side-effects of Paxlovid. Arthur was teaching and I texted and asked him to hurry home after his class. Miranda called soon after she got my message, worried about me, and confirmed that Paxlovid can cause dizziness. She talked to me about what she had read, but also made sure I was well enough to stay at home. I said that I was, but that I had briefly felt so terrible, horrible and no good that I wondered if I needed to be in the hospital.
I once again left a message at the doctor’s office, this time about Paxlovid, and Arthur returned home in time to talk to the nurse who called back. Her take: “That crazy Paxlovid.” She said it was fine to stop taking the drug and that I should drink water to make sure I wasn’t dehydrated. After all those intense night sweats I probably was somewhat dehydrated, so I drank a lot of water and also stopped the Paxlovid. The dizziness went away and stayed away, which was a huge relief. I did not restart Paxlovid.
The next day, though, I woke up to terrible, horrible, very bad leg pains. Readers who have been treated with TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation) as part of physical therapy know the feeling of having targeted low level electrical impulses sent to an injured muscle to relieve pain. Both of my legs felt as if they were wrapped in TENS machines that had been set to the highest level possible, causing no good, very bad pain. I found this mystifying, but apparently all manner of leg pain can be a symptom of Covid. Lucky for me, Alleve provided complete relief, so I took it around the clock for two days until the pain went away.
My fever had abated by that point, the dizziness was done, and my legs no longer felt like they were being electrocuted. I thought I was getting better, but then some terrible, horrible, no good gastrointestinal distress began. The details here feel a bit TMI even though I’m a nurse, but I thought I had dodged the GI bullet only to have it hit at what I had hoped was the 11th hour for the virus.
By the end of the week I was functional, if still coughing, tired, and not always keeping my food in my stomach after eating. It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week and I wish I had some wisdom to impart from all this suffering, but I only have a few insights to share. First, accept help if you need it, whether that’s from a doctor’s office, my friend Diane making us a roast chicken, or Miranda dropping off Thai food (when my appetite and stomach recovered). I took all offers of help and was very grateful for it. Second, get vaccinated. People might say that I was vaccinated and still got sick, so what’s the point, but I didn’t get go-to-the-hospital-because-I-can’t-breathe sick and I call that a win, even if some people wouldn’t. A jab in the arm is way better than a breathing tube stuck down the throat. Trust me—it is. And third, give into the acute phase of the illness and the prolonged recovery by getting rest. I watched movies and re-read murder mysteries between bouts of sleeping when I was very ill. After I felt better many of you, my readers, encouraged me to rest, a message I didn’t always heed, but appreciated, and I definitely rested a lot more than I might have without such encouragement. Now, this week, I feel pretty close to normal.
Covid, alas, is not going away, and perhaps that’s the ultimate message of this newsletter. We lived through the lockdown, the arguments about masking and vaccines, the question of whether or not kids should go to school, the stress of having normal life essentially put on hold for a very long time. Now, we go where we want, we don’t mask, and life mostly feels normal, yet Covid is still here, a reminder of how bad the pandemic was in terms of illness experienced, lives lost or forever altered, and ordinary existence suspended. It was a global tragedy and probably we all need to rest to recover from it, but in our go fast and break things culture, rest doesn’t have much of a place.
To paraphrase Alexander’s mother, some days are terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days. Some weeks, like mine with Covid, are the same. To have a bad year or longer, though, that’s unusual for those of us who don’t have to worry about where our next meal is coming from or paying the rent. And yet we did have a bad year—all of us. My wish is that we retrieve some grace from our troubles, whether that means asking for and accepting help, or doing what we can to stay as healthy as possible, or giving ourselves time to recover. We may be done with Covid, but Covid is not done with us, and will not be, it seems, for a very long time. We must make the best of it. As I learned from this bout of serious illness, we really don’t have a choice.
Hugs to all and stay well,
Theresa
I am glad that you are feeling better. I loved your story, very insightful and entertaining. I'm sorry that it took such a bad experience to lead to its creation.
Pat fife
Glad you are on the other side … be well and take care always - xo