My Time with COVID

First, I will admit that I thumbed my nose at COVID.  I have diabetes and stage III kidney disease.  I was told I should be vaccinated.  But I made the conscious choice to not do it.  I was angry at the restrictions they were putting in place.  And it was because of those restrictions that I reluctantly agreed to get the vaccine.  My wife and I were planning a weekend trip to New York in October 2021.  The city of New York made it impossible to do anything without a vaccine.  So, I scheduled my vaccine, and received the first dose of Pfizer on August 26.  That was a Thursday.  The following Monday morning, I woke with a scratchy throat.

I thought little of it because I tend to deal with allergies every year around this time.  But then came the fever.  It was slight; below 100°.  I received a positive COVID test result on September 2^nd.  That was Thursday, exactly one week after my first Pfizer dose.  And for the first week, I was fine.  Yes, I had a slight fever and cough.  But I was not feeling badly at all.  Maybe the first dose had helped lessen the symptoms.  And maybe, just as I had suspected, COVID wouldn’t be that big a deal for me.

On the afternoon I received the positive test result, I contacted my doctor.  Because I am a higher risk, I asked if there was anything I should do.  The answer was get lots of rest and drink plenty of fluids, and if I have chest pains or difficulty breathing, I should go to the ER. 

Then it hit.  The fever climbed, and the cough got worse.  GI issues kept me close to the toilet.  And when I went to bed at night, I could hear and feel the crackle down in my lungs that told me I was in danger of pneumonia.  As I said, I get allergies every year.  And most years, it tends to settle in the lungs, and I end up with an upper respiratory infection that requires a couple of doses of steroids and anti-biotics to clear. 

My wife brought an oxygen sensor home from a friend.  I put that on my finger a lot, and carefully monitored my oxygen levels.  I was taking Tylenol to help with the fever and taking Nyquil at night to quell the cough and try to sleep.  My daughter called in a steroid pack and some anti-biotics.  I started taking them and, for the next two nights, had an experience I had never had before, and hope to never have again.

I’ve woken up sweaty plenty of times.  But those two nights were so much more horrible than any other time before.  The sheets above and below were completely soaked.  I could have wrung cups of sweat from them.  As I pulled the sheet back to get out of bed, it was peeling off my body, stuck not just here and there, but all the way up and down my body.  I have NEVER sweat that much.  And it wasn’t like normal sweat.  There was an…odor to it.  Not a sweaty, salty smell.  It was almost an astringent smell.  It would have been bad enough to sweat that much.  But the odor truly disgusted me. 

I tried to figure out what the odor reminded me of.  I thought of peroxide but that didn’t seem quite right.  The next day, I typed “Night sweat smells”, and got dozens of results for “Night sweat smells like vinegar.”  That was it.  Several of the pages I read said the vinegar smell can come from diabetic ketoacidosis or can be due to kidney disease.  I had found out a year previously that I had stage III kidney disease.  But this was the first time I had ever experienced sweating like this, especially with the odor. 

It happened again the following night.  This is honestly one of the grossest things that I have ever experienced.  Mild compared to throwing up in bed, or worse.  But just the unnatural smell and the amount of sweat.  I weigh myself every morning.  The morning after the first sweating, I weighed 167lbs.  I drank some water and took my medicine.  Before I ate anything, I weighed again.  I was 170.  It wasn’t surprising to lose three pounds of water weight, considering how much I had sweated.

A few times, my oxygen level dipped down into the upper 70’s.  And a couple of those times, it took several seconds to climb back into the upper 80’s before finally making its way back into the 90’s.  It was that way on Thursday, September 24^th.  And as I watched it, waiting for it to climb, my heart began fluttering.  My wife was at work, and I was just about to decide I might need to call 911 when I had to cough.  Once the coughing began, my oxygen began climbing, and my heart settled down.  I wasn’t sure if the heart flutters were due to low oxygen, or if I was stressed about the readings, and that made my heart skip a few beats.  Either way, I knew it was time to get more serious.

That evening, my wife took me to the ER.  As I told them all of what was going on, three of them asked me, “Why did you wait so long to come in?”.  They told me it was too late to give me the antibodies.  So if my doctor had sent me to the hospital (or anywhere else I could have received medication), I might have began feeling better a week previous, skipped the hospital visit, and been on my way to recovery. 

At the ER, my fever was gone, and the oxygen looked good.  Chest x rays showed acute pneumonia and I was prescribed antibiotics and an inhaler.  The doctor warned me the inhaler was going to be rough.  But I needed to get the fluid cleared from the lungs so I could begin breathing again.  I was sent back home, and my wife picked up the medication the next day.  And, just like they warned, the inhaler was a horrible experience.  It took several days to feel ANY relief at all.  But every six hours, I would take two puffs.  And I would spend the next several minutes coughing.  Not a normal cough-cough, let’s get rid of some fluid.  But a deep, grinding cough that would completely exhaust my entire body.  I had to hope it was doing some good because it was far worse than only being able to take short breaths. 

After several days, I noticed I was able to breath just a little bit deeper. 

As of this writing (a little over three weeks from initial symptoms), I am breathing at about 95%.  I still get winded walking up and down the stairs.  I climb the stairs (slowly), and I’m done for a bit.  I feel like I’m 90.  I feel so far from “normal”, and, even thought it’s only been a couple of weeks, It seems I’ve got so far to go to get back to being able to participate in a normal day’s activities.  But I also feel I’ve come quite a way from where I was less than a week ago. 

As a Christian, I’m to always be thankful.  And despite what has been going on, I’ve been so very thankful.  So many people I know have been in ICU, on ventilators, and have been told to get the family together.  Mine has been mild compared to them.  And I have found comfort in the little things through it all.  I had no problem thanking God for His mercy to me.  I’m here in Texas, where when I get a chill, I can curl up in my comfortable bed, and pull soft blankets up around my neck.  I’m not in Nairobi where a bed might be a piece of cloth on the cold hard dirt.  I’m thankful that when the GI issues flair up, I can go sit on a toilet in the air-conditioning.  I’m not stooping on the ground and using leaves or dirt.  I was able to go to the ER in an air-conditioned car and receive care from some of the best medical hands in the world.  Yes, there is plenty that I’m thankful for.