I didn’t even get out of the car, didn’t touch a thing; all I know is that after we voted, we both came down with Covid. The obvious conclusion here is that voting causes COVID-19. It was early Friday, after our eye examinations, that we drove down to an Official Ballot Drop Box to deposit our mail-in ballots, enjoyed lunch at Otro, probably infecting everyone, and then went about our day innocent to the plague we were now carrying.
For Caroline, it started with a hint of something going wrong on Thursday (November 3rd), while for me, I thought I was having psychosomatic moments on Friday when I imagined I experienced a moment of quickly passing discomfort in my throat. By Saturday, I knew I had this cold as well. Caroline had been working from home Friday, although her Covid tests on Thursday and Friday were negative. Well, with me fully into the feelings of yuck on Sunday and Caroline having a seriously difficult time sleeping, we picked up some fresh test kits, and on Monday, November 7th, she tested positive. That could only mean that I was in the same boat.
Monday, November 7th: On Friday, I fetched ginger and lemon to make us ginger, lemon, and honey tea, which, while it might only be a placebo effect, seemed to make both of us feel better. By today, we’re on our 4th lemon, and while we have a bit of an annoying cough, sometimes seriously rough for Caroline, we still manage to eat well, go for walks, and get things done. Obviously, I’m hoping we are on the 5-day infection plan that tomorrow Caroline will be well on the way back to normal, and that by Wednesday, I see light at the end of the tunnel. My temperature is reading about 100, and my blood oxygen is 94; this moves around from normal temperature, while blood oxygen is often 97.
While Caroline tested negative, we went out as usual to the grocery store, a small breakfast joint, and me to Costco and Starbucks. Now, with the confirmation of COVID-19, we masked up on our outing to Walgreens for some Mucinex DM that we understand might help with Caroline’s cough. I’ll be taking it tonight as a pre-emptive measure just in case I start showing some of her bad symptoms. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we are both experiencing some low-grade headache tension, but other than those things, all seems to be going along no worse than a cold. Here’s hoping our vaccinations and boosters deliver a relatively mild case of this virus.
Tuesday update: I felt like meh all day, though somehow I found the energy and mind space to write all day updating old blog posts, nearly maniacally. I had a 40-minute nap, went shopping for a couple of things, and even got to my 10,000-step daily minimum for the first time in a couple of days.
Wednesday: Woke up at a more normal time, blood oxygen 99, temperature also 99. And then, around 7:30 this morning, my sense of smell took a hit. I tried smelling dried shrimp, which normally almost immediately triggers a gag reflex, and found that I can breathe it in all I want, the same goes for fish sauce. It’s 8:30 pm now; I could go to sleep, as a matter of fact, I likely will, minutes from now. I’m about to start my third box of Kleenex, and we’ve used more ginger and lemons in the past five days than we can believe. On the good news side of things, I’ve updated no less than 25 old blog posts that needed a refresh of photos and some more details regarding trips we took between 2004 and 2006. On the bad news side of things, I’ve only made it to 9,300 steps today, and the remaining 700 is just too much to ask.
Thursday: is that a hint of scents? Sporadic and randomly, I catch glimpses of smells with my tongue responding to spicy and sour. My nose is a faucet, while Caroline’s cough is mostly sidelined.
Friday: Meh. To our surprise, Caroline’s boss delivered a care package in the afternoon, complete with a big batch of homemade menudo (courtesy of a coworker and her mom), fruit, more soup and crackers, and cough drops.
Saturday (November 12): The dried shrimp smells of ammonia to both of us now. We both can smell cider vinegar, though not at full strength. I asked Caroline to put on some of her Joop perfume; I can pick that up, and the first bite of banana has hints of its flavor. We’ve stopped the constant run of the nose; temperatures are absolutely back to normal. Updating old posts and photos has continued at a blinding speed. Yesterday, I reworked all 170 photos that accompanied our 8-day January 2010 Yellowstone vacation as I apparently took some shortcuts prepping those out of the 4,202 that I shot over those days. Caroline is on a Skype call with her father, Hanns, and I’m about to get working on old blog posts marked as partials where I need to update photos, text, or both as part of making our index of trips complete.
Whoa, a burger from Five Guys punched right through my reawakening sense of taste while the potatoes cooking in oil was the first thing that made it through our masks after we walked thru the door. Is it possible that life is returning to normal?
Sunday: Seems that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Monday: Caroline tested negative twice between yesterday and this morning, and with that, we are going to try to throw ourselves back into normal life.
My final conclusion, I believe we started getting sick before October 28th, just prior to our trip to Duncan, Arizona. This is based upon data from our Fitbits and what I believe is one of the main reasons why Google bought the company. On that day, our resting heart rates both started going up from their norm in the mid-60s up to reaching 80 resting beats per minute when we were in the worst part of COVID-19. Once that peaked and our symptoms started to subside, our resting heart rates began their return to normal. I suspect that in the next 48 hours, I’ll be back around 64 beats per minute. The thing is, we didn’t know we were getting sick until November 3rd and 4th, while it appears our fitness tracker was showing us that our bodies were responding to infection, though we couldn’t have known precisely what until our Covid tests alit with a positive reading. I don’t like the idea that Google knows we’re getting sick way before we do.