I think I know you
Today is a bad day. Maybe I've read too many articles about people losing their jobs; maybe I'm sick of being stuck in the house with the kids. I'm overwhelmed by trying to make the right decisions and do the right things and still feeling very, very helpless to affect positive change in the face of this pandemic.
There is something that wears away at me – annoyingly – because I can not reach any resolution on it, although it seems like a factor that could make a big difference.
I think I may have had Covid-19. From about January 20th to February 15th. And now I am also going to mention that Fritz, who works in medical research (therefore making him more authoritative than me), is unconvinced. So you may take this information with a grain of salt and I will not hold it against you. And really, this retrospective self-diagnosis is only based on the anecdotal information I'm getting from stories of mild infections in the media.
Here is the background: the week before my symptoms started, we had a houseguest staying with us. This houseguest had been traveling internationally. Fritz's lab also works with a number of researchers who traveled in and out of China during December and early January.
On January 20th, I came down with fatigue and chills and fever. I laid in bed for multiple days. Fritz, meanwhile, traveled to San Jose for a conference, leaving me at home with the kids. Because I was barricaded in the bedroom, mostly sleeping and shivering, the kids were on their own making meals, etc. I'd peel myself out of bed to drive them to and pick them up from school. The kids did not seem to get sick at this time, a fact I attributed to their flu shots and my lack of a flu shot. When my fever broke (after about 3 days) I started to cough. I got winded walking up and down the stairs. There was no runny nose involved, but I did have a sore throat. Around this time, Fritz returned from San Jose earlier than anticipated. He didn't come home early because of me, he came home early because there had been some sort of drama where his AirBnB host got evicted while he was staying at the AirBnB.
When he got home, I was coughing enough that I would go into the bathroom and cough in the middle of the night to keep from disturbing him. I tried to cough stuff up, because it felt like I had crap in my lungs that needed to come out. I figured that the sore throat was a post nasal drip and the crap in my lungs came from the post nasal drip. Coughing stuff up was hard to do. So mostly, I just coughed until I had pain in my chest.
I called my mother frequently to whine – about the coughing, about Fritz traveling and insensitively having his own AirBnB drama while away, about me trying to work and take care of the kids alone in the middle of all this. She told me that I'm always sick. First of all, this is not true. Second, this made me feel like I needed to suck it up and stop whining and continue living a normal life. I proceeded to go out, I learned to suppress my coughing in public, and I washed my hands all the time. In my defense (because I might have infected a fair number of people at this point in time, assuming), there was very little information about the actual symptoms of Covid-19, and I never would have qualified for a test.
Fritz, after living with my coughing fits for a few days, came down with a headache. it was annoying, but he wasn't debilitated in any way. Eventually, my coughing let up. My shortness of breath went away after about two weeks.
The kids also got sick shortly after me. The kid sickness rolled through our house. But it was different from my sickness. Trixie thought she was going to throw up, but never did. She spent two days sleeping and having a fever. Next, Noah got sick. He also slept and had a fever. He spent one 4 hour period throwing up and dry heaving every 20 minutes. Finally, Mattias got sick. He also threw up and slept and had a fever. This didn't really look like my sickness, so we said that the kids had a stomach virus. There's a stomach virus going around, we said. The whole neighborhood has it, my neighbor told me. I determined it was not related to my (initial) sickness.
After we got through all of the kids' sickness, I got nauseous as well. I never threw up, but my temperature spiked one last time and I had chills and spent a day in bed. I figured my immune system had still been compromised, and that was why I was got the kid's stomach virus.
Then, I really got better. That was around February 15th.
Fritz never had anything other than the headache.
All of this is just a very long way of saying – testing! We should be testing. Testing both for the virus AND for the antibodies. If a portion of the population has already had Covid-19, without knowing, and have developed antibodies, maybe these stay at home orders aren't necessary. But we just don't know unless we test.
I, for one, would be living a very different life right now if I knew that I – and the kids – had already had Covid-19. I know there's a lot of unknowns about antibodies and about whether or not they provide protection and for how long they provide protection. Isn't that critically important to start looking at now?!? Also – Fritz! The man must have unusually strong antibodies! Let's get that man tested, too!
There is something that wears away at me – annoyingly – because I can not reach any resolution on it, although it seems like a factor that could make a big difference.
I think I may have had Covid-19. From about January 20th to February 15th. And now I am also going to mention that Fritz, who works in medical research (therefore making him more authoritative than me), is unconvinced. So you may take this information with a grain of salt and I will not hold it against you. And really, this retrospective self-diagnosis is only based on the anecdotal information I'm getting from stories of mild infections in the media.
Here is the background: the week before my symptoms started, we had a houseguest staying with us. This houseguest had been traveling internationally. Fritz's lab also works with a number of researchers who traveled in and out of China during December and early January.
On January 20th, I came down with fatigue and chills and fever. I laid in bed for multiple days. Fritz, meanwhile, traveled to San Jose for a conference, leaving me at home with the kids. Because I was barricaded in the bedroom, mostly sleeping and shivering, the kids were on their own making meals, etc. I'd peel myself out of bed to drive them to and pick them up from school. The kids did not seem to get sick at this time, a fact I attributed to their flu shots and my lack of a flu shot. When my fever broke (after about 3 days) I started to cough. I got winded walking up and down the stairs. There was no runny nose involved, but I did have a sore throat. Around this time, Fritz returned from San Jose earlier than anticipated. He didn't come home early because of me, he came home early because there had been some sort of drama where his AirBnB host got evicted while he was staying at the AirBnB.
When he got home, I was coughing enough that I would go into the bathroom and cough in the middle of the night to keep from disturbing him. I tried to cough stuff up, because it felt like I had crap in my lungs that needed to come out. I figured that the sore throat was a post nasal drip and the crap in my lungs came from the post nasal drip. Coughing stuff up was hard to do. So mostly, I just coughed until I had pain in my chest.
I called my mother frequently to whine – about the coughing, about Fritz traveling and insensitively having his own AirBnB drama while away, about me trying to work and take care of the kids alone in the middle of all this. She told me that I'm always sick. First of all, this is not true. Second, this made me feel like I needed to suck it up and stop whining and continue living a normal life. I proceeded to go out, I learned to suppress my coughing in public, and I washed my hands all the time. In my defense (because I might have infected a fair number of people at this point in time, assuming), there was very little information about the actual symptoms of Covid-19, and I never would have qualified for a test.
Fritz, after living with my coughing fits for a few days, came down with a headache. it was annoying, but he wasn't debilitated in any way. Eventually, my coughing let up. My shortness of breath went away after about two weeks.
The kids also got sick shortly after me. The kid sickness rolled through our house. But it was different from my sickness. Trixie thought she was going to throw up, but never did. She spent two days sleeping and having a fever. Next, Noah got sick. He also slept and had a fever. He spent one 4 hour period throwing up and dry heaving every 20 minutes. Finally, Mattias got sick. He also threw up and slept and had a fever. This didn't really look like my sickness, so we said that the kids had a stomach virus. There's a stomach virus going around, we said. The whole neighborhood has it, my neighbor told me. I determined it was not related to my (initial) sickness.
After we got through all of the kids' sickness, I got nauseous as well. I never threw up, but my temperature spiked one last time and I had chills and spent a day in bed. I figured my immune system had still been compromised, and that was why I was got the kid's stomach virus.
Then, I really got better. That was around February 15th.
Fritz never had anything other than the headache.
All of this is just a very long way of saying – testing! We should be testing. Testing both for the virus AND for the antibodies. If a portion of the population has already had Covid-19, without knowing, and have developed antibodies, maybe these stay at home orders aren't necessary. But we just don't know unless we test.
I, for one, would be living a very different life right now if I knew that I – and the kids – had already had Covid-19. I know there's a lot of unknowns about antibodies and about whether or not they provide protection and for how long they provide protection. Isn't that critically important to start looking at now?!? Also – Fritz! The man must have unusually strong antibodies! Let's get that man tested, too!
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