Down With the sickness
I got Covid while on vacation and it sucked.
Over three years ago, whisperings of this mystery disease overseas started making their way onto news outlets and into general conversation. I was celebrating my thirty-third birthday with a large group of friends out at a restaurant, laughing, talking, unmasked. It was a blissful night full of love and hope for a future that was yet unwritten.
I had a surreal moment near the end of the night. You know the kind I mean. One you remember years later as if it was yesterday. I sat surrounded by friends, my chosen family, and I thought, "This disease is going to spread and this will change everything." I tried to shrug off the feeling and go back to the party, but it lingered like a shadow behind my eyes.
Two months later, the world changed forever.
Fast forward to two weeks ago. My partner had a bit of a sore throat the evening before we were to leave for home. He chalked it up to the air conditioning in our hotel, nothing to worry about, and we went to bed. That morning, he awoke with a dry cough and the same sore throat dialled up a notch. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as we drove home that day. Confined in a small space for hours with no masks, you can imagine what happened next. That evening, he went downhill fast, and by Saturday, he had tested positive. On Saturday morning, I also woke with that familiar sore throat and a productive cough. Several hours later, I tested positive as well.
As far as covid cases go, ours were relatively mild. We had mild fevers, mild coughs, and mild sore throats, but each day seemed to bring on something new. On Day four, I lost my sense of taste and smell, and on Day six, I started feeling chest pain. It's now day 11 and I am feeling a lot better. We're both testing negative on RATs, and the leftover symptoms are milder still.
Now, on the other side, we are scratching our heads and asking, how did we finally get it after all these years!? I'm not saying that we are invincible, but we're vaxed and we've both had numerous very close calls and managed to evade it. Even on vacation, we didn't have much contact with the outside world. We were staying in a remote b&b outside of a small city. Even when we went into the city, we didn't have a lot of close contact with strangers. We did hear, after the fact, that the area we visited was seeing an increase in cases. Judging by the way symptoms progressed, we figured we picked it up on our first day there, which narrows the places to the restaurant we stopped at when we first arrived or the gas station we stopped at to fill up.
I suppose we'll never know exactly how or when we got it, but this has been an invaluable lesson for me. I let my guard down and stopped wearing a mask. I also stopped being as careful as I was at the start of the pandemic, and I paid the price. I took for granted my robust immune system and the dumb luck I was experiencing the rest of the times I could have easily picked up the virus. I will no longer be so careless and I will be even more diligent as we move farther away from the immunity the virus has left us.
One lesson I am taking away from this ordeal is the importance of mindful breathing. I am one of the luckier people because, although I developed chest pain, I never experienced breathing issues. I attribute this to the years of mindful brrathwork I've done through yoga! I also used my breath as a way to calm myself and regulate my nervous system when things were especially stressful.
There is research out on the effects of short-term respiratory rehabilitation on patients with long covid. One study conducted by Manzur Kader et al. found that the respiratory and heart rates, "improved in the intervention group compared to the control group. At 7-day follow-up, differences remained significant concerning the oxygen saturation and the need for oxygen therapy."
The moral of the story and the main take aways are this: don't take your health for granted, remain diligent and listen to anecdotal evidence that cases are rising in your area. If you hear that more and more people are testing positive where you live, there is a good chance that the virus is prevalent there as well. Also, practise mindful breathing whenever you can. There are loads of great videos on YouTube, or maybe book a class at your closest yoga studio. Remember to keep a positive outlook and if you're one of the lucky ones who hasn't contacted this disease yet, count your lucky stars and go buy a lottery ticket. You must have a horseshoe where the sun doesn't shine.
