Living with COVID - a week of being weak

We are getting used to our new lives. We feel a little like fugitives on the run, staying hidden from others. Mark's symptoms continued to get worse as his fever is persistent and he has a sore throat and now a cough. He's not interested in eating and any effort wears him out. A couple ibuprofen finally brought his fever down and made him more comfortable. Then he could make the drive to our hiding place for the next week--Prairie Creek Corp of Engineer Campground, near Rogers, Arkansas.

With big camp sites, we had plenty of space away from others. God is taking care of us. When we made the reservation, we lucked into a great site. It was level and long--making it easy for us to get set up. God knew that we didn't have the strength to drag out leveling pads to deal with an unlevel site. Denisa had a head ache this morning, but she attributed that to sleeping on the couch for the last several nights. She is still trying hard to keep her distance from Mark's symptoms.

It's obvious to us that Mark has COVID, and it has been recommended that he should be tested. By afternoon, Denisa had a scratchy throat and runny nose, so we both went to Med-Express in Rogers for their drive-in testing.

We did all the paperwork via telephone from the parking lot. After getting registered, we pulled into one of the testing parking spots. A nurse suited up in protective gear did three nasal swabs--one for the quick COVID test, one for the slow COVID test, and one for the flu test. We waited in the parking lot for 15 minutes until the nurse practitioner came back with our results. We are BOTH strong positive for COVID based on the quick test. It looks like Denisa's efforts to stay well were futile. The good news is that she can stop wiping down everything Mark touches. We're obviously in this thing together! Even though Mark had a two-day head start, we're counting this as Day #1 of our official journey with COVID. We'll include pictures taken of our beautiful camp site, where we are sequestered this weak week.

Day #2 - Denisa had already started a notebook with Mark's symptoms and temperature readings. Now her data would have two columns as we started tracking two temperature readings. We are glad to be in a lovely place, but we are sad to be spending this time feeling so unwell. Her symptoms started ramping up, as Mark continued running a fever and feeling achy. With no one well enough to cook, we were glad to have leftovers from before Denisa got sick. Neither of us had an appetite, but we knew it was important that we kept drinking and trying to eat.

Day #3 - Neither of us had any energy, and just walking the length of the motor home wore us out. Besides writing down our frequent temperature readings, Denisa also wrote some of our symptoms. She wrote things like, "We are achy--even our hair hurts." We had back pain, and strangely both had sharp pains in our right shoulder blades. We were parched from our fevers, and had to make a concerted effort to keep drinking fluids. But the scary symptoms started this day when our lungs began to feel compromised. It's hard to describe the feeling, but Denisa's lungs felt strangely "thickened," and we both felt an unusual pressure in our chests. After all the news stories about shortness of breath and respirators, these were the scariest symptoms.

Day #4 - As if being sick and sequestered inside wasn't bad enough, we got a couple days of rain too. Our outlook is gloomy, both inside and outside. We got a phone call from Med Express this morning, checking on us. They don't offer follow-up care, but they recommended the local hospital emergency room if our symptoms persisted. They had gotten the results from our long COVID test, and they reported that it was very positive (of course). We were glad to tell the nurse that we felt better today than yesterday. But we both have severe fatigue. We both felt like we were twenty years older than the week before. Our camp site was reserved by someone else for tonight, so the main project of the day was dumping our tanks and moving to a new site. That would be no problem on a normal day, but today it took all our energy and wore us out. If this is what it feels like twenty years from now, we won't be RVing in twenty years. We got a break from the weather, so at least we made the the move when it wasn't raining.

Day #5 - This would be the day that our cases of COVID took different paths. Mark's case started sooner and he suffered from more persistent and higher fevers. While Denisa started feeling better on Day 5, Mark's symptoms took a turn for the worse. He slept more today, and he started some odd symptoms. His legs felt numb and his chest felt bruised. Denisa knew he felt bad, when he started saying that he might go to the doctor tomorrow . . .

Day #6 - We had heard that COVID symptoms can seem to come and go, and today it came back with a vengeance for Mark. He was so weak that he couldn't even stay awake. He slept all night and then all day. Denisa had to rouse him to make him eat a little and stay hydrated. It was frightening to see him so lethargic. He agreed to use our insurance's telemedicine service. It was nice to get a medical opinion that this turn for the worse and his symptoms weren't unusual. COVID often lulls you into believing that you're getting better, only to smack you back down. This was a smack down kind of day. Will this virus ever give up and go away?

Even though this blog feels like it is speeding through the week, we can assure you that it was one of the longest weeks of our lives. Even though it felt like Denisa had a light case of the virus, she was still miserable with aches and fevers and severe fatigue. Mark's symptoms were doubly serious and just kept hanging on. Living with COVID is miserable as we finished up our first week of being weak.