FitzTheRuke
Legend
Hi. I'd like to share my journey with you. My life has a lot to do with games (and this site in general) so I don't think it's totally inappropriate to share here. Also I love you folks. This board is an amazing community.
So... I have a mild case of COVID19 (or so I'm told). I'd like to talk about it, so that if you're a healthy person who's panicking, you might relax a little, and if you're a healthy person who's relaxed, you might take things a little more seriously. People who are vulnerable, I expect, are already taking things at least as seriously as they should. We should all be very, very serious about it, but not act rashly (as all people should strive to do when faced with a crisis.)
Here goes - I'll try not to take too much of your time, but I have a tendency to digress.
Background - I own a comic and game store in western Canada. I'm 46, and I am very average. Average height, average weight, average shape. I have no chronic illness, and I walk 15 minutes to work, plus I have a dog, so I walk more than your average American (no offence to them). Otherwise, I don't get much exercise. I have a little around the middle from Christmas that I haven't even bothered to try to get rid of.
Saturday March 14 - Late afternoon, I was at my store and I felt a headache coming on. I took an advil because someone used all the store's tylenol. I prefer tylenol but the advil seemed to do the trick.
Sunday March 15 - My store is open Sunday, but it's my family day. I have a wife and two teens. We hung out in the morning, and I did some catching up on the play-by-post games that I run and play here on ENWorld. In the afternoon I went to a friends place where we did some archery. We like to drink craft beer and shoot things. It's more hipster than it is redneck. I felt fine, but I made sure not to hug anyone (we are huggy) and to keep my distance, though I wasn't worried at the time that I had anything. It was just what we'd been told to do. In the evening, my wife and I went for groceries. People had been buying out the toilet paper for awhile, but now they were on to everything. There was no meat, eggs, milk, flour, etc, etc. The store felt violated. My wife actually cried in the car on the way home. She's normally very stoic.
Monday March 16 - My store's closed, so Mondays are kind of my Sunday, if you know what I mean. I took it easy. Felt fine in the morning. We went to another store to look for things we'd missed. This place was even worse. People were running around, there were huge lines. I tried to avoid people, but it was impossible. We went home empty handed. In the evening, the headache came back, and I felt run-down.
I woke up in the night to go to the toilet, and I saw something I hadn't since I was a child. I was born seven weeks premature, four pounds. When I was small, I used to get bronchitis often. Monday night (probably Tuesday morning actually) I saw shapes swirling around on the wall in the dark. Hallucinations that flashed me back to when I had a high-fever mixed with low oxygen from bronchitis. I hadn't even remembered it until then.
Tuesday March 17 - In Canada (at least where I am) we have a COVID19 hotline. I called them, and they told me I was fine to go to work (!) but that if I wanted to be overly paranoid about it (okay, they didn't use those words), I could isolate myself for fourteen days. This would be terribly hard on my business, but I decided to do it anyway. I called my top employee and told him he was in charge. I told him to reduce the store's hours (I work at least a third of the store's hours on my own, and more with one or two other people) and to start disinfecting everything - the door, the debit machine, the counter. And to monitor his own health very, very closely. Who knows how long I had anything before getting symptoms, right? (I hadn't interacted with him since Friday, and only briefly). So I stayed home, and I came down with very thick lungs. Hard to breathe. Very much like bronchitis. My wife and kids chose to isolate themselves too, in case they're carriers.
I had to cancel my Tuesday night face-to-face D&D group too, obviously.
Wednesday to Friday March 18 to 20 - Fever, cough, heavy chest, sore throat (though the throat not too bad). Always feeling like maybe I'm getting past the worst of it in the morning, and getting much worse in the evening. At night, I got night sweats - hot and cold. Always worse at night and feeling not so bad by 5am. Exhausted by the afternoon every day, though.
Saturday March 21 - The heavy chest seemed better. I started to feel like maybe I was on the mend. By the afternoon, I started a strange feeling that I can only describe as feeling like I'm drowning - the back of my throat is producing (still is as I type) so much fluid that I feel like... have you ever swam in the ocean? Ever get hit in the face by a wave when you come up to take a breath and swallow water? Well, I have, and it feels like that. I'm swallowing water all the time and it's getting in my lungs too. It's very different from the bronchitis heavy-lungs feeling, but I can actually breathe less than I could then.
Sunday March 22 - Up until this point, I've felt it's "not that bad". I know I'm healthy, so I'm not likely to die. I've been isolating myself to protect other people from me, not the other way around. There's a mountain behind my house that's entirely forested. I walk the dog there. I almost never run into another person, though I've run into a bear once (yay, Canada!). All this time, to get my exercise, I've been taking the dog up there during the day (wiping the doorknob down and avoiding other people and not touching anything I don't have to).
This time, I almost didn't make it up the trail. I'm not talking a long hike. Normally, I run up this hill with my dog off-leash. It was like running a marathon (not that I've done that, but I've cross-country skied a five kilometre race years ago). When I got back, I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was drowning worse than before.
I called the COVID19 Hotline. It took three and a half hours to get through. I almost called emergency, but I know a few breathing exercises, and they kept me with oxygen until the worse past, which was before the nurse answered. After answering all her questions, she told me that I have a mild case of COVID19. They're not testing people who are likely to survive, because they need all the tests for medical staff and they're short. She told me to call emergency if I get worse, but to hang in there, stay quarantined, avoid people, and when my symptoms are down to just a cough, I can start counting to ten days. After that, I'm free of it.
The fourteen day isolation is only for people who think they may have contracted it - if they don't show symptoms by then, they're supposedly safe. If you get it, you could have symptoms for much longer, and you're still possibly contagious for 2 to 10 days afterwards, so better to err on the side of caution. (Or so I was told).
UPDATE: Monday March 23 - In the morning I felt okay (obviously still a cough and that drowning feeling persisted), but as I expected, in the afternoon I got worse again. When it comes to fever, I hadn't had more than a minor one for a few days. I got medium-bad (I mean, I've had worse, but it wasn't fun, let's say). Though I had a nap, I didn't shake it, and for the first time, I lost my appetite for dinner. I had chills over night.
UPDATE: Tuesday March 24 - I was pretty weak, but as usual, I felt a little better in the morning than I did in the night. Though not as good as some of the mornings so far. I decided to stay in bed as much as possible. Which turned out to be a good idea, as I got very dizzy and feverish in the evening.
UPDATE: Wednesday March 25 (Day 10) - I'm glad to report that I might be finally past the worst of it. I had a terrible fever through the night (maybe the worst I've had, though they blend together) - but it broke by morning. Aside from a cough and a sore neck, my energy level has stayed pretty good today (compared to any previous evening), and I really feel like I might be nearly done! Knock on wood.
UPDATE: Thursday March 26 - Definitely on the mend. I'm low-energy, and have a bit of a headache, but even my cough has dropped down to tolerable levels.
Addendum: My wife and kids have yet to show any symptoms, in spite of being sequestered with me in a 1000 square-foot condo. I imagine three possible reasons for this: 1) We have done an amazing job of keeping my germs from them; 2) They have higher resistance somehow (Perhaps from being breast-fed. I wasn't.); 3) They will come down with it within the next week. I hope for 2, because I really doubt 1. Please not 3.
Thanks for letting me share. Take care of yourselves. I'll be around if you have any questions. I've got nowhere to go.
Edit: Feedback Request: It occurs to me that my original post didn't give you all anything to do other than feel sorry for me, or ask questions, so I'm gonna put this one out there:
Out of a sense of community, and to keep me entertained in my quarantine, if you've got nothing better to do and you are inclined, please tell me about yourself. Where you're from, what games you like or dislike, what you do. I mean, you can keep it vague-ish (I guess I kind of did, even while revealing some personal stuff). It's up to you. But I wouldn't mind getting a conversation going here, other than just get-well wishes (which are nice). Any takers?
So... I have a mild case of COVID19 (or so I'm told). I'd like to talk about it, so that if you're a healthy person who's panicking, you might relax a little, and if you're a healthy person who's relaxed, you might take things a little more seriously. People who are vulnerable, I expect, are already taking things at least as seriously as they should. We should all be very, very serious about it, but not act rashly (as all people should strive to do when faced with a crisis.)
Here goes - I'll try not to take too much of your time, but I have a tendency to digress.
Background - I own a comic and game store in western Canada. I'm 46, and I am very average. Average height, average weight, average shape. I have no chronic illness, and I walk 15 minutes to work, plus I have a dog, so I walk more than your average American (no offence to them). Otherwise, I don't get much exercise. I have a little around the middle from Christmas that I haven't even bothered to try to get rid of.
Saturday March 14 - Late afternoon, I was at my store and I felt a headache coming on. I took an advil because someone used all the store's tylenol. I prefer tylenol but the advil seemed to do the trick.
Sunday March 15 - My store is open Sunday, but it's my family day. I have a wife and two teens. We hung out in the morning, and I did some catching up on the play-by-post games that I run and play here on ENWorld. In the afternoon I went to a friends place where we did some archery. We like to drink craft beer and shoot things. It's more hipster than it is redneck. I felt fine, but I made sure not to hug anyone (we are huggy) and to keep my distance, though I wasn't worried at the time that I had anything. It was just what we'd been told to do. In the evening, my wife and I went for groceries. People had been buying out the toilet paper for awhile, but now they were on to everything. There was no meat, eggs, milk, flour, etc, etc. The store felt violated. My wife actually cried in the car on the way home. She's normally very stoic.
Monday March 16 - My store's closed, so Mondays are kind of my Sunday, if you know what I mean. I took it easy. Felt fine in the morning. We went to another store to look for things we'd missed. This place was even worse. People were running around, there were huge lines. I tried to avoid people, but it was impossible. We went home empty handed. In the evening, the headache came back, and I felt run-down.
I woke up in the night to go to the toilet, and I saw something I hadn't since I was a child. I was born seven weeks premature, four pounds. When I was small, I used to get bronchitis often. Monday night (probably Tuesday morning actually) I saw shapes swirling around on the wall in the dark. Hallucinations that flashed me back to when I had a high-fever mixed with low oxygen from bronchitis. I hadn't even remembered it until then.
Tuesday March 17 - In Canada (at least where I am) we have a COVID19 hotline. I called them, and they told me I was fine to go to work (!) but that if I wanted to be overly paranoid about it (okay, they didn't use those words), I could isolate myself for fourteen days. This would be terribly hard on my business, but I decided to do it anyway. I called my top employee and told him he was in charge. I told him to reduce the store's hours (I work at least a third of the store's hours on my own, and more with one or two other people) and to start disinfecting everything - the door, the debit machine, the counter. And to monitor his own health very, very closely. Who knows how long I had anything before getting symptoms, right? (I hadn't interacted with him since Friday, and only briefly). So I stayed home, and I came down with very thick lungs. Hard to breathe. Very much like bronchitis. My wife and kids chose to isolate themselves too, in case they're carriers.
I had to cancel my Tuesday night face-to-face D&D group too, obviously.
Wednesday to Friday March 18 to 20 - Fever, cough, heavy chest, sore throat (though the throat not too bad). Always feeling like maybe I'm getting past the worst of it in the morning, and getting much worse in the evening. At night, I got night sweats - hot and cold. Always worse at night and feeling not so bad by 5am. Exhausted by the afternoon every day, though.
Saturday March 21 - The heavy chest seemed better. I started to feel like maybe I was on the mend. By the afternoon, I started a strange feeling that I can only describe as feeling like I'm drowning - the back of my throat is producing (still is as I type) so much fluid that I feel like... have you ever swam in the ocean? Ever get hit in the face by a wave when you come up to take a breath and swallow water? Well, I have, and it feels like that. I'm swallowing water all the time and it's getting in my lungs too. It's very different from the bronchitis heavy-lungs feeling, but I can actually breathe less than I could then.
Sunday March 22 - Up until this point, I've felt it's "not that bad". I know I'm healthy, so I'm not likely to die. I've been isolating myself to protect other people from me, not the other way around. There's a mountain behind my house that's entirely forested. I walk the dog there. I almost never run into another person, though I've run into a bear once (yay, Canada!). All this time, to get my exercise, I've been taking the dog up there during the day (wiping the doorknob down and avoiding other people and not touching anything I don't have to).
This time, I almost didn't make it up the trail. I'm not talking a long hike. Normally, I run up this hill with my dog off-leash. It was like running a marathon (not that I've done that, but I've cross-country skied a five kilometre race years ago). When I got back, I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was drowning worse than before.
I called the COVID19 Hotline. It took three and a half hours to get through. I almost called emergency, but I know a few breathing exercises, and they kept me with oxygen until the worse past, which was before the nurse answered. After answering all her questions, she told me that I have a mild case of COVID19. They're not testing people who are likely to survive, because they need all the tests for medical staff and they're short. She told me to call emergency if I get worse, but to hang in there, stay quarantined, avoid people, and when my symptoms are down to just a cough, I can start counting to ten days. After that, I'm free of it.
The fourteen day isolation is only for people who think they may have contracted it - if they don't show symptoms by then, they're supposedly safe. If you get it, you could have symptoms for much longer, and you're still possibly contagious for 2 to 10 days afterwards, so better to err on the side of caution. (Or so I was told).
UPDATE: Monday March 23 - In the morning I felt okay (obviously still a cough and that drowning feeling persisted), but as I expected, in the afternoon I got worse again. When it comes to fever, I hadn't had more than a minor one for a few days. I got medium-bad (I mean, I've had worse, but it wasn't fun, let's say). Though I had a nap, I didn't shake it, and for the first time, I lost my appetite for dinner. I had chills over night.
UPDATE: Tuesday March 24 - I was pretty weak, but as usual, I felt a little better in the morning than I did in the night. Though not as good as some of the mornings so far. I decided to stay in bed as much as possible. Which turned out to be a good idea, as I got very dizzy and feverish in the evening.
UPDATE: Wednesday March 25 (Day 10) - I'm glad to report that I might be finally past the worst of it. I had a terrible fever through the night (maybe the worst I've had, though they blend together) - but it broke by morning. Aside from a cough and a sore neck, my energy level has stayed pretty good today (compared to any previous evening), and I really feel like I might be nearly done! Knock on wood.
UPDATE: Thursday March 26 - Definitely on the mend. I'm low-energy, and have a bit of a headache, but even my cough has dropped down to tolerable levels.
Addendum: My wife and kids have yet to show any symptoms, in spite of being sequestered with me in a 1000 square-foot condo. I imagine three possible reasons for this: 1) We have done an amazing job of keeping my germs from them; 2) They have higher resistance somehow (Perhaps from being breast-fed. I wasn't.); 3) They will come down with it within the next week. I hope for 2, because I really doubt 1. Please not 3.
Thanks for letting me share. Take care of yourselves. I'll be around if you have any questions. I've got nowhere to go.
Edit: Feedback Request: It occurs to me that my original post didn't give you all anything to do other than feel sorry for me, or ask questions, so I'm gonna put this one out there:
Out of a sense of community, and to keep me entertained in my quarantine, if you've got nothing better to do and you are inclined, please tell me about yourself. Where you're from, what games you like or dislike, what you do. I mean, you can keep it vague-ish (I guess I kind of did, even while revealing some personal stuff). It's up to you. But I wouldn't mind getting a conversation going here, other than just get-well wishes (which are nice). Any takers?
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