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Life Update
3/18: Flashes of sharp gut pain throughout the morning/afternoon, felt fine in the evening.
3/19: No symptoms of note that I can recall, but I think this is when my sense of smell took a dip, because usually when my flatmate uses the oven this burnt grease smell enters my bedroom and I have to crack a window to get rid of it. I didn’t do that, and I thought it was because he didn’t cook that day, but in hindsight it might have just been that I couldn’t smell.
3/20: Woke up feeling short of breath. Never been short of breath before. It wasn’t at all what I expected. I always thought it meant labored breathing. But my breathing wasn’t labored. I felt like I was breathing normally, but the air I was breathing was less oxygenated than usual. Feeling went away after I cracked a window and drank some hot coffee. I did not think I was sick at this point. I thought maybe my room just needed airing out (I used a strong smelling cleaning spray the night before and also kicked up quite a bit of dust moving furniture around.) Felt fatigued in the evening, but again that could be chalked up to moving furniture.
3/21: Runny nose all day. Sneezing. Possibly fatigue, but hard to tell because my sleep schedule was really out of whack at this point.
3/22: Woke up short of breath again, worse than before. This time my breathing was labored in addition to the other feeling I described and I realized I was definitely sick. I felt like there was fluid in my lungs. Cold feeling in my chest that went away temporarily if I drank a hot beverage.
3/23: Same symptoms as previous day, more severe. Shortness of breath got particularly bad when I was lying down. I made myself a bunch of hot coffee because caffeine is a mild bronchodilator. At this point I was legitimately worried. I propped up a bunch of pillows so I could sleep on an incline, and breathe easier at night, and told myself if I woke up in the morning not having improved, I’d go to the hospital.
3/24: Condition improved. Same symptoms as previous day, but less severe. I drank a lot of hot tea, hot coffee, hot soup.
3/25: Random attacks of watery diarrhea throughout the day. Mild chest congestion. In the evening I felt well enough to do a little bit of exercise, but I was still getting tired more easily than usual.
3/26: Headache. Fatigue. Mild chest congestion. Sense of smell and taste seem back to normal.
3/27 (today): Headache. Milder chest congestion than yesterday.
ETA 6/20: No recent symptoms, BUT, after doing some reading yesterday I realized that I failed to mention some symptoms. I had a week or so in April where it seemed that my arm would fall asleep if I just leaned on it wrong for 2 minutes, and sitting positions that were usually fine for long periods would unexpectedly result in my leg falling asleep. So ... circulation issues? I also had a mysterious pain in one of my calf muscles, like a muscle cramp. It was definitely muscle pain, and not tendon pain. It hurt when I was standing/walking. It was mild, but it lingered for about a month. I don't remember the exact amount of time but I remember on several occasions thinking "this should have stopped hurting by now." I recently learned that one of the potential complications of covid is blood clotting/circulation problems, as well as never problems, so these symptoms might be covid related after all.
Note: I have been checking my temperature regularly (2-3 times a day) and I’ve had no sign of a fever whatsoever. I want to say my appetite’s been normal, but actually I take medication that decreases my appetite and drinking coffee decreases my appetite, so there’s no way for me to tell if the virus is impacting my appetite.
I've been self quarantining since the 2nd week of the month, although it wasn't really intentional the initial week -- I just happened to have that week off, and then my friends cancelled all our plans, so I stayed in and watched Chinese soap opersas. Work sent me an e-mail saying "we're shut down, your paychecks will be mailed" on the 14th, and that's when I for real started self-quarantining.
I'm still getting paid for all the shifts I booked through the end of April. My shifts are booked 2 months in advance, and I'm guaranteed pay for those shifts once they're booked, unless I'm the one to cancel them. After April, hopefully work can re-open, or the government figures out the whole basic income thing because this is not a job that can be done remotely.
I desperately need to do laundry, but I’m delaying the trip to the laundromat until the washable face masks I ordered arrive on Monday. I've been washing panties in the sink and getting groceries delivered.
I do have a small work-from-home film scoring gig that I've been procrastinating on, in addition to my day job.
Besides watching television (I've become utterly obsessed with The Untamed) I've been learning Mandarin on Duolingo and I've started an herb garden in my bedroom window. I have about 40% of an Untamed fanfic written, and 8 million vid ideas that will have to wait until after I finish scoring this short film.
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