My Experience with COVID-19

Some would say with all my travel in the last twelve months that I would inevitably catch COVID – and many would smugly believe I had it coming.

That all may be true, maybe I did have it coming. And I did catch COVID. But I caught it locally.

But locally or in an airport or while traveling the world, I would not care – I do not regret just living my life.

Like 99% of people under the age of 60, I got what may have been considered a mild or moderate case of COVID. I did not seek medical help, I was not hospitalized. I will say that having COVID is sort of waking up everyday to the option of “what is behind door number 2, please?” Some days I felt well, then felt worse. Some days I had severe sinus pain, sometimes I had a backache. Two days I felt well enough to do a light workout in my gym, and on day 11 I felt probably the worst I’d felt the entire illness and spent the entire day on my couch.

But COVID is certainly not the sickest I have ever been. I have had pneumonia before, several extremely severe sinus infections, bronchitis and as a child I was hospitalized with asthma. I have also had the flu twice immediately following flu shots – both of those flus were worse than this.

However, COVID has been maddening in it’s own way. On about day 4, I experienced what could only be called a sizzling feeling in my upper nasal passage. I swear I could actually hear it. And after that, my sense of taste and smell were lost to me. Maybe permanently. So far I have not recovered them. I have forgotten what it is like to smell anything.

I spread COVID to my sister – to no one’s surprise – and during our illness we bonded over the shared misery of our lost taste and smell. A morning check in text, “can you taste today?” And then sharing how now for us eating is more about feeling our food and experiencing texture and temperature than it is about taste.

I have read that it could be weeks or longer before we regain our senses so I am resigning myself to the remainder of the year eating with the frustrating inability to be satisfied. I am reminded of the damned crew on the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean. They have a hunger they cannot satisfy, “food turned to ash in our mouths.” Yup. I can relate.

I inadvertently shared my COVID cooties with a few other people, including a vaccinated person, and we all had pretty much identical experiences with our illness. As I am a full time remote employee (since before the pandemic) I didn’t miss any work, I didn’t even tell my boss about my illness. I worked, I functioned and during the process I even sold my house (more on that later).

Does this change my mind about the vaccine? Not at all. In fact, despite the fact that the hashtag has been banned on social media, I am happy to know I now have natural immunity to this going forward. The vaccine likely wouldn’t have prevented my catching COVID and my experience wasn’t much different than that of the vaccinated individual.

And now, back to living my life without fear.

Death isn’t empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom… Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, fear of death. I say we break those chains.

Pierce Brown