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Recovering from COVID-like symptoms during Week 2 has meant further strategizing to manage shortness of breath and chest pressure. All this has kept me very busy and last night/today marks the completion of two full weeks since these symptoms started.
Week 1 had hit me like a ton of bricks, and I wrote about it here:
Hey, I am still alive!
I have been on high alert, making sure that I stay alive, so I may not have been very friendly or sleeping all that well, but I am pleased with the result of still being alive. All my thanks and good wishes to friends and family who have been checking in and sending their thoughts and prayers.
I do appreciate it and hope that you are doing well. It really is very important to be careful and healthy yourself, so please focus on that to the maximum. Your help/gifts such as this pulse oximeter have been instrumental to my recovery so far. I really, really have benefited from being able to check my pulse and oxygen levels, so I shared that on Instagram and hope that other patients suffering from COVID-like symptoms might have the same advantage.
COVID-like symptoms during Week 2
My recovery from COVID-like symptoms during Week 2 has continued to be non-linear and the following symptoms have been present:
- Low fever – This has become milder
- Shortness of breath – Still there
- Chest pressure – Still there
- Nasal congestion – Been managing with allergy meds
- Runny nose – Been managing with allergy meds
- Sore throat – This came back worse and then subsided
- Weakness – This might be getting better
- Aches and pains – Specifically, experienced pain in the right forearm for a few days, better now
- Loss of appetite – This has gotten better towards the end of Week 2
- Tiredness – This might be getting better
- Anxiety – Writing continues to help with this
Shortness of breath
The primary persisting COVID-like symptom during Week 2 is shortness of breath, and that has felt like having a limp. Not that I have had a limp long-term, but it’s an analogy. When people ask me how I am feeling or about the shortness of breath, it has been kind of irritating to respond.
I am like, “Yup, it’s still there.” Does a limp get better from one day to another? Not really. It’s just there. It stays there. This shortness of breath is kind of like that. You will be the first to know when it is totally gone.
In the meantime, I still have to plan and strategize so that I don’t run out of breath doing regular activities like going down the stairs, showering, going to the kitchen, doing my laundry. I can’t do it all and constantly be on my feet. I have to rest in between.
I can’t talk a lot. It’s bad for me right now.
It makes me out of breath. Got it?
So, I write. Writing is like oxygen for me, anyway. It helps.
Chest pressure
Although shortness of breath is the most irritating and depressing of all the symptoms, the chest pressure takes the cake for being the scariest and most anxiety-inducing. Therefore, also self-fueling. Goddamit.
How to explain it…
…it is like I feel everything in my chest now. If I lift a cup, I feel it in my chest. It’s like my chest measures the weight of everything these days.
How much water weighs, how much a can of soup weighs, or how much my trash weighs, is all felt and measured by my chest. I feel it there.
So, I have to strategize. I can’t go about my day as normal. I have to think about every step and every task. There is no one else here to do these tasks, so I have to get there myself.
Any task that involves moving or lifting something requires managing both symptoms, shortness of breath, and chest pressure.
If I do my laundry…
I can’t also do the dishes in the same bracket of time…
Lots of sitting down, resting, and deep breathing are called for as I continue my overall task of recovering from COVID-like symptoms during Week 2.
Fortunately, both reading and writing can be done without exerting oneself too much, physically.
Hey, I hope you are doing well, and if you are reading these posts, please do leave me a comment below. That would really make my day.
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