The Days When I Had (What I Think Is) COVID
I had COVID. I think. I'm not sure.
One day (12.24) I was pulling an all-nighter watching videos on youtube like a jobless loser that I am. It was 7 o'clock in the morning. I was kinda hungry so I decided to have a pack of instant noodles. I had the same instant noodles before, it was only a bit spicy; but this time when drinking the noodle soup, a strange burning sensation stuck on my throat. "Ah fuck," I thought, "now it's either this goes away by noon or I'm having COVID."
The sensation, in fact, did not go away by noon. Shit I'm in big trouble now, I thought, because I never took any COVID vaccine (I'm not anti-vax, I just don't trust Sinovac). I went down to the nearest pharmacy to get some fever medicine (which I was surprised that they even got any; I thought they were all gone within the first week after the bastard gov stopped the zero-covid policy). The pharmacist recommended two kinds of fever medicine for mild and heavy fever separately. I bought both (and also some cough medicine). That night my temperature went up to 37+ Celsius and I was having mild headache.
2022.12.24 23:10
i'm still okay-ish. it feels like i've drunk too much alchohol but worse. unlike the headache from too much acetaldehyde in your system it's just like the same amount but as a continuous background pain.
my mom got it a few days before and is fine-ish now. she did two sinovac though so i don't know how things will work out for me...
I worked on a side project for a bit, thinking if this is the best the virus can do I'll just work as I normally would because, you know, when it comes to working east Asians are a bunch of fucking masochists...
2022.12.25 01:52
now my body feels cold and starts to shake. my thighs and knees starts to get tired as if i've just ran 10km. ate some icecream. it was good, cool your temperature down a bit, distracts you from the headache...
a few hours more and i'm gonna take stronger fever medicine and go to sleep.
And then shit got way worse. I tried to endure as long as possible because I took the medicine for mild fever and I didn't want to take the other one in a short timespan and risk overdosing, but the headache was so bad I took the medicine anyway.
2022.12.25 01:55
body temperature creeps up to 38.3 celsius. this is not good...
It did not feel like the medicine have helped at all.
I did the relaxation trick trying to force myself to fall asleep so that I wouldn't have to be conscious about the headache. I laid flat on my bed, imagining losing control of my fingers, toes, hands, feet, gradually remove my consciousness from my muscles... it didn't work, the headache was just too painful, and when I consiously regained the control of my limbs they started to hurt like I have been working out for way too long.
After probably a dozen of failed attempts it seemed like laying flat wasn't an option so I forced myself to sleep on my sides. To my surprise it somehow worked and I finally managed to sleep for about 2 hours. I woke up with the headache raving in my head. It did not feel like I've slept at all.
2022.12.25 05:58
I feel like shit. It's not the throat that bothers me the most, it's the headache. Couldn't sleep because of this.
I tried to go back to sleep, but did not have much luck.
Also the wisdom tooth I did not bother to remove (because most of the time it didn't hurt at all) started to hurt. That's a whole another level of fun...
2022.12.25 06:44
39.3 now. I don't think i've ever been this ill before.
I sat on my office chair thinking to myself, so this is what all the main characters in Japanese school anime feel when they've got a cold huh. I've always thought they're simply weaklings but it seems that I've mistaken. Yeah, this is... no. This is fucking ridiculous, I'm not gonna work today.
I took some fever medicine and went back to sleep after this.
2022.12.25 17:43
i managed to sleep a little bit. headache 75% gone, replaced with severe painful coughing. body temperature still at 39+ though. things tasted different, everything tastes slightly like cardboard now.
I slept through the whole day. Sleep for a few hours, wake up, rest on the office chair for a bit, if it's time then take medicine, go back to sleep, repeat.
2022.12.25 20:16
Headache completely gone after taking fever medicine (i really hope it wont come back again). Still feeling dizzy because of the fever (38.9). Throat very sore.
Did nothing today except watching youtube. The headache was way too nasty.
With the headache gone for the most part I decided to do something else other than sleeping so I watched a whole bunch of videos on YouTube. I tried to work but I could barely focus.
People said that your throat would feel like being sliced by razors and your nose would feel like being sealed with cement. It kinda did but not nearly as severe as I had imagined. Before the fever kicked in I told my mom that I could be having COVID, she suggested me to buy a few bottles of sweet herbal tea as well as the medicine. I did, and it turns out those herbal tea are the only thing that tasted the same (it was very nice on my throat, better than icecream), sweet and with a herbal flavor.
2022.12.26 03:07
couldn't sleep so i got up. not because of the headache - i've simply slept way too much yesterday.
currently at this limbo state of between "hungry" and "having no appetite".
From this point forward I'm having sleep issues. I'll become very sleepy before noon around 11 A.M., sleep for the whole afternoon & evening and wake up at around midnight. If I try to take a small nap I'll just straight up doze off on my office chair and wake up a few hours later. There was this one time when I somehow slept at a normal time and I thought, okay maybe this thing is gonna fix my sleep schedule and I didn't gain nothing for this whole ordeal after all, but no, the sleep problem persisted.
I ate a little bit and tried my best not to puke.
2022.12.26 05:09
37.7 now. good sign. throat still feels like it's on fire though.
the bad news is whenever i cough my whole upper body hurts like hell - feels like multiple knives stabbing you at once.
It did feel like knives stabbing you. It was fucking painful.
2022.12.26 18:30
Still 37+, with very serious coughing issue. it feels like i'm coughing my lungs out instead of knives stabbing now.
And I'm still coughing till this day (2023.1.14).
2022.12.28 01:16
after sleeping through the whole afternoon and the evening body temperature back to 37.1. now it feels like a typical cold without the sneezing.
2023.1.1 07:19
update: 36.5 now. cough 75% gone. voice ruined. will keep resting because my stamina isn't fully recovered & even something as simple as going downstairs & throwing out garbage renders me extremely tired. there had been reports where people seemingly "recovered" only to have much more severe symptoms a few days later so i'll try to be as careful in the next few days.
The thing is that when I move too much my heart rate goes over the roof and my heartbeat triggers the coughing so I cough, but the heart rate stays high because I am coughing and have no way to regain my breath thus I can't help but keep coughing ad infinitum unless I somehow force myself to rest. It was painful.
My voice did recover bit by bit in the following two weeks.
Post-fever
I kept coughing after the fever was gone till this day (2023.1.14). When I had just recovered from the fever I cough up phlegm with traces of blood from time to time. My mom told me to go to the hospital to check if it's serious but I'm too lazy to care (this is really stupid, don't do as I did...). I think the virus did infect my lungs. Oh well.
I actually never did a proper COVID test when all this was happening - I couldn't get any, they were all sold out. I'm fairly certain I was having COVID because everyone in this city is having COVID and normal flu can't possibly reach my apartment - I have been staying inside my apartment for months and barely leaving.
I did not get any COVID vaccine prior to this. I'm not anti-vax, I just don't trust anything Chinese now. I was waiting for Pfizer/Moderna/other vaccine from foreign countries but that never happened because of the bastard gov here; it really didn't matter whether you get the vaccine here anyway because with the zero-COVID policy you just have to do PCR test and you're still required to do PCR test even after having the vaccine.
2023.1.15
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