#i woke up on saturday with a sore throat but only tested positive today (tuesday)

[frotting-corporations]

got covid again. girl i knew that old man hacking his lungs out on the bus without covering his face on friday was gonna come back to haunt me

[half--agony--half--hope]

First off THE VACCINE DID NOT GIVE ME COVID 

TMI info below

I just have the worst fucking luck in timing.  I got the vaccine Friday 12/18. Saturday 12/19 I felt 100% fine.  Sunday 12/20 I had a sore throat which I didn’t think anything of, I get them from time to time r/t allergies and GERD causing post nasal drip.  Though I have since been reading lots of people get this symptom that I never knew was one.  

Monday 12/21 at the end of work I was fucking exhausted, like that right before your period fatigue.  But work was also just fucking awful. So I wrote that off.  

Tuesday 12/22 I woke up feeling fine.  I had gone to bed early and took Nyquil just cause I know it makes me have great sleep if I need. Got to work to find my office mate had called in sick due to body aches and headache that she said she’d had since she got the vaccine the same day as me.  Work suggested she get tested since that is a while to still be having that.  I asked to be tested as well since her and I work in a small room together and she’s not the best about wearing her mask.  In keeping with everything 2020 she is negative and I am positive but I guess blessing in disguise cause I wouldn’t have thought to test with the minor symptoms I had.  They had me test twice in case the vaccine caused a false + which I don’t think is a think but also with my coworker getting a negative it’s was obvious my positives were accurate.  Since it was just me as the only case manager for 44 patients and shit needed to get done I stayed at work in my office alone until about 3 when the fatigue hit again and then I went home to quarantine.

Today Wednesday 12/23 I can tell I am sick.  It feels like a shitty cold.  My head is congested and I have a bit of a cough. It is productive but just a little bit of phlegm and very thick.  When it hits I have to cough a lot to bring it up but once I do I have no cough for a few hours.  Woke up today with no body aches but we will see how long before the fatigue is back. Diarrhea started this morning.  I feel a bit nauseated now but I think that is likely due to the vitamins I took cause they always do that to me.  My RR and O2 sat are normal. No fever.  I feel almost as bad as when I was sick back in February and I’d hoped once we learned covid was around longer than we knew that it had been covid.  I didn’t have antibodies when tested in May.

Based on start of symptoms I am out of work though at least 12/29. But we will see how my course runs.

Upside of living alone I don’t have to worry about who is around me right now. I do feel like shit that on Sunday before I had any symptoms I saw my sister and mom for outside lunch.  We have done this frequently thanks go great So Cal weather where we all bring our own chairs and sit distanced and wear masks if we aren't eating.  But still I worry.  They are going to wait a few more days to get tested and are isolating just in case.  

I am really not sure how I got it.  I really do practice what I preach and don’t go anywhere. Those 2 family members are the only people I see outside of work.  Everything with anyone else is porch drops. I haven’t eaten at a restaurant since March.  I almost never go into stores, and do drive up or delivery. My direct boss is out on medical leave though not specified as covid and I saw her 11 days before my symptoms so technically in the window.  We have had a few nurses go out in the past few weeks with it that work on the floor but being in case management I still see them though not for extended contact so who the fuck knows. 

I am hoping my course doesn’t get much worse.  I am obese which I know is an extra risk factor.  On my last check up end of May my BP, fasting sugar and A1C were all normal though so that is good.  But I can’t claim continuing to work though this pandemic has made me at all healthier.  I have my vitamins and fluids and meds for symptom relief.  I am trying to get up and move around every hour.  

*I am aware the following thoughts are not entirely valid* I feel so fucking stupid getting the virus now.  I made it through months of working directly with patients on the covid floor and now after I decided I couldn’t take it any more and moved to CM I get it.  I was so excited about the vaccine and now I have to wait 3 months and start over so my dose feels wasted.  Overall it just feels like some sort of cosmic punishment.  I really feel like I have tried my best through all of this while watching people who don’t give a shit rarely get it and they will think their luck justifies their actions.

[reelmeoutcutthestring]

My BF has been going into work 2 days a week for about 6 weeks. He works in a community college library, where the computer lab is. All their classes have been moved online. The library is supposed to be by appointment but their board made them go in every day for reasons that seem purely optics based to me. Masks are required but a lot of people have been letting them slip below their nose. They try to distance but sometimes they help people who don’t know like how to insert a flash drive.

My stomach was off Thursday, which happens a lot when I don’t sleep enough. The day before I had a morning appointment at the DMV because my license picture is too old so I had to go in in person and take my mask off for a photo. I woke up on my own at 5:30am. Thursday my neighbor’s alarm woke me at 6:30am. So not getting enough sleep plus stress from my job changing at work wasn’t helping stomach.

I made mac and cheese for dinner and I felt not great after eating it, like bloated and kind of nauseated. BF told me a couple of things this week: he had a one-on-one appointment with someone Wednesday who was talking about how they’d been on a plane (he didn’t know when) and got a call and said like, “It’s just the doctor” and didn’t take it. Also, their work study student called out sick on Thursday after working Wednesday. I could barely think about anything else Thursday night. Until of course I saw the Trump diagnosis and then I fell into a news hole and didn’t sleep well.

Nausea increased Friday, to the point where I ate like toast and buttered noodles only. My BFF urged me to get a COVID test; someone we work with (I’ve been at home for 6 months so this person is not a risk) tested positive recently. She had very mild symptoms: like tickly throat and stuffy nose. My throat has been dry because it’s been smokey from fires. BF has had like some body aches, feeling flush, eyes feel swollen, throat has been sore, and tummy has been off (he’s having borderline diarrhea and I am not). 

On Saturday I was still nauseated and we fought about getting tested. I read that some mild cases only have GI symptoms. I was basically in hell at this point. He said we could get tested together today (Sunday) if we weren’t feeling better. But I just went into a panic all day (including it took us hours to pick a thermometer from Amazon because reviews are such farces). Finally like 20 minutes before our testing site closed I was freaking out and said, “I’ll wait to go tomorrow if you don’t fight me on it” and he said he couldn’t guarantee that so I started crying and put my clothes on and left to get a test. I got there 5 minutes before they closed and was the second-to-last car in line. 

His reasons for not going don’t make sense to me. At first he thought you don’t start showing symptoms for 2 weeks but that’s not true (2-14, but an average of 5). He also said we both had bad colds (or were they?) in March and we didn’t get tested. But in March we didn’t have the symptoms we were told we would; they were more like colds. And tests were really scarce so we may not have been able to get them. He says there’s nothing they can do to treat you but I think the information is important. It literally makes no sense to me. I think he’s just afraid, but I can’t live with that kind of fear. I felt a lot better just for getting the test but I’m still freaking out a bit.

The timeline doesn’t really make sense for getting sick this week. If we got sick last week, it’s very bad because I went to the DMV (I passed their screener, including temperature but I know a lot of that is just theater). I also needed my W-2 and asked my mom to print it for me Tuesday night before my appointment. They left it outside for me and I saw my family briefly outside, masked and distanced. But it worries me all the same. And then I was at the fucking DMV (masked and distance except the idiot teenagers who wear their masks below their nose). And the census taker came to the fucking door even though we filled out our form on April 1 (distanced and both masked but still). 

I’ve tried really hard to only go out when I have to. I’m working fully from home and that’s going to continue into mid-2021 at least. I’ve picked up a few things my my parents’ (always outside and distanced), I go to the store once every 3 weeks. We did one curbside pickup at Best Buy in June for a pre-order from February. Whenever we go out into the world beyond the parking lot, clothes go straight in the laundry and we shower. I take out the trash and check the mail and always wash my hands. I still don’t open most packages right away even though surface transmission is rare. I am not great about masking when I do trash/mail, when I walk through our short hallway but I sure as shit will be now. (I usually just hold my breath in the hall which seems pretty dumb I guess.)

BF is going in 2 days a week and that seems to be the biggest potential infection site. He says they’ve had trouble with students not masking correctly.  He has to quarantine if he travels anywhere but there’s no requirement for students to be accountable to the staff serving them. They try to distance during appointments but they’re not allowed to do online-only appointments with screenshare. So trying to distance while teaching someone something on their laptop....it just seems like something bad is going to happen.

My stomach still feels bad today. Last night I even ate some steam-in-a-bag vegetables with rice and a fake chicken patty and it was okay. We tried to make rice pudding with the leftover rice and IDK if I ate too much or it had too much milk in it. Today is not great. I have had intense nausea like this. When I was 18 and 19 and applying to college/starting college I had this exact same thing. I remember my 19th birthday dinner was a glass of water. Every once in a while when I’m extremely stressed and not sleeping I get like a nausea/sour stomach thing and have to survive on protein shakes for a couple of weeks. So maybe that’s all it is. But I’m scared. And upset. I love my BF but his medical anxiety is ridiculous and has already put strains on our relationship. This is not the time to be in denial. EDIT: I finally wore him down and he got a test today.