I never expected I would get the virus as I had just spent the last two weeks holed up in a socially reclusive bubble recovering from bronchitis.
Unfortunately for me, the other members of my household are essential workers, so I quickly traded one illness for another. I remember the first day of symptoms vividly. At first, it was just mild fatigue, but it had blossomed into an inability to keep my eyes open by the end of the day.
My body felt like it had been boiled from the inside out and I had a temperature of 102F to prove it. I feared the worst was yet to come, only it never did.
I woke up the next day to find my temperature had lowered to 100F, and although my fatigue was still present it wasn’t severe enough to keep me bedridden. On the third day, my breathing began to feel restricted but I had expected that, so it was not enough to worry me.
I was more bothered by my new inability to smell or taste things because somewhere along the line in quarantine, eating had transitioned from a necessity to a hobby.
These symptoms persisted, fluctuating in intensity for the next two weeks, but they were never as bad as that first day. My experience with COVID-19 could be compared to walking a marathon, time-consuming, and tiresome but not deadly.
However, I’ve spoken with people whose experiences were more akin to sprinting across a field that never ends, and by that, I mean, intense periods of feeling on the verge of death, gasping for breath, wishing for it to all be over.
Two people I talked to are Cody and Jasmin. They asked that their real names not be used because of fear of the stigma still associated with the virus. Here are their stories.
Cody’s feeling of invincibility was his downfall. He never took the virus seriously until it forced him to. It began with a slight cough, but by day 4 he was nearly unable to leave his room.
The fatigue he endured was so potent that it took all of his energy just to get up to go to the bathroom.
His family brought him food, but he recalls, “I was unable to taste anything so I rarely ate what they brought.”
By week two, he was considering going into the emergency room because it was becoming more strenuous to breathe, with no signs of stopping.
Still, he says, “I didn’t want to worry my family.” So he stayed home to fight on his own.
Thankfully he made it through, but the virus didn’t leave empty-handed. It took 15 lbs away from his body and three weeks away from his life before it began to fade away.
The after-effects of the virus lingered for another month before he “felt normal again,” he says. But he was just grateful to have gotten through it.
For Jasmin it started with an innocent nosebleed in April, but by May she was hit with a full range of symptoms. She developed a fever and nausea. Vomiting became unavoidable.
Like me, she was also robbed of her sense of taste and smell, but that was the least of it. A week after she developed a fever, she was admitted to the emergency room.
It was there that they hooked her up to oxygen, and it was there that she lived for the next month.
Her first few days at the hospital were plagued with nightmares of drowning, and panic attacks, but because of the medication and oxygen administered, she was able to calm down and survive.
Survive, not recover.That process would take much longer. After she left the hospital, everything from her chest up was in pain, sleeping became difficult, and the virus left her body functions feeling, “blocked up.”
Her experience with the virus was a lengthy one and at the end of it she had this message to share: listen to federal and state officials about wearing masks and wash your hands. Prevention is the best way to deal with the virus.
Anecdotal stories aside, how deadly is Covid-19? As of October 9, 2020, the European CDC marks the American death rate of those infected with the virus at 2.8%.
This number doesn’t initially seem high compared with pandemics of the past like the black death, the smallpox pandemic, or the Spanish flu, but that’s what makes it so terrifying. It makes it easy to downplay the severity of the virus.
It makes it easy to take on a lax attitude with measures utilized to control the virus, and it makes it easy to have the invincible mindset that leads to infection and death.
I’ll leave you all with a question, one my friend asked that helped me put things into perspective: If you were offered a bowl with 100 pieces of your favorite candy in it and told that three would kill you, would you have a piece?
