Testing positive for COVID-19
As a Brazilian girl when the people started to talk about this virus I thought: "Whatever, I am from a place where dengue fever kills people, yellow fever, leptospirosis, malaria, and many more…and what is this a glorified cold?! I will be just fine"
I couldn't be more wrong about this and slowly I started to notice that it was a lot more than a "glorified cold".
Back in March when it really hit my home state (Washington -USA) I, like the majority of people thought the health department was overreacting about this and shutting everything down for I don't even know how many weeks was too much. I just could not comprehend why so severe measures were necessary but the amount of people contracting the virus and so many people dying I had to take a step back and rethink about everything.
Of course it is very hard to be thinking about this logically because I was losing so much money with this now pandemic, the way it was personally effecting my life it was hard to simply accept the fact that we might need to be extremely worried about this and not only that — I had close friends and people I looked up to, arguing that this was too extreme and it is hard to not let someone influence you when they are affirming your point of view, when their way of thinking benefits your own agenda but after battling so much over this I understood this is a serious disease and our government (federal and state level)and the world leaders should be making this top priority. Which is so infuriating because while so many people are losing their loved ones, people dying every single day and people struggling to provide for their families, the world made this a political battle and forgot about what the reason issue is here but this is topic for another rant…
It is so hard to understand how bad this disease can be and even harder to acknowledge the fact that you very well could catch it and be very sick because despite all the number on the news I did not have anyone close to me test positive for coronavirus, so just like most everyone, I did not think I could catch it.
I became very ill around June/July so I was extremely cautious for as long as the doctors told me I was in the high risk for this, I knew my immune system was very damaged and I knew that if I for whatever instance had the covid-19 it was going to be bad but months went by, I lost my business and pooft just like that I started to get sick.
I woke up in the middle of the night and my whole body hurt, I had the chills and my temperature skyrocketed. At first I thought I had some sort of inflammation because I was on steroids for that back in abril and my throat was sore again so I decided to move to the living room just in case so my boyfriend would not get sick and I thought I was just going to sleep it off. I am very naive sometimes.
I woke up again worst than when I went to sleep and my temperature was even higher now… I knew I had to get tested. Later the same day my boyfriend booked me an appointment for 7pm so I just waited until then but I was getting worst by the minute and by the time I took the test I was a little disoriented. After the test, I took some Tylenol for my fever which was already 103.1f and I finally slept.
The next day felt worst then the first but I had to work, to research a bunch stuff for the business and my birthday was the next day so I had to get better but I just couldn't… my fever would go down after I was medicated but it would go right back to 100f after a few hours and now it was hard to breath and my lungs would hurt and by Wednesday even though I did not have the results I knew I was going to be positive because I felt like crappy and sure enough after feeling crappy during my birthday, the results came the next day and I was positive for covid and even though now the numbers are so high I just could not believe I would catch it. Friday, I only had a mild fever and by Saturday I had no fever and the symptoms were getting better. Except for day 7th when I finally lost my sense of smell.
I am only on my 7th day so I still have another 7 days to go but now I can see that my body is recovering and now this only feels like a bad cold but it really was bad up until day 5. I can see how people with respiratory problems are dying and the elderly population are dying from this. This really is hard on your body and I am just glad I did not pass to anyone else but probably my boyfriend who is now asymptomatic. (waiting for the results of his test still)
All this to tell you who are so brave for reading this until now… take care of your loved ones at risk. I am health and I don't live with anyone who could be hospitalized if they happen to catch Covid-19. I am not visiting my grandmother or going partying to infect anyone but I don't take it lightly.
NOW… I still think the shutdown is funky and I am 100% against it. Do I think nothing should be done? Absolutely not, it is a pandemic for god-sake but I have yet to see the president or the governors taking this serious. It is a blame game and while they play we suffer.
Take care and be safe, whatever that looks like to you.
xo
Andrea.