I felt the brutality of COVID-19 for the first time starting February 9, 2020. It was a Sunday. I spent the week with what I thought was the flu at first, but quickly realized was something I had neve reexperienced before. By the third night of trying to sleep and being unable to because I was counting my breaths, carefully trying not to cough... I realized something was very wrong.
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| Suffering Long Covid |
I lied in bed debating going to the emergency department at the nearby hospital, only two miles from my house. I was exhausted after several nights of no sleep. If I drive, could I pass out? If I don't, could I die? Should I call an ambulance? And then, I passed out. I woke the next day actually...feeling a little better. The worst was over.
But long covid was about the begin. That lasted somewhere between eight and fourteen months. Due to the nature of it, it is really hard to tell. I spent most of 2020 in my recliner in my living room. Awake, then asleep, lethargic. Exhausted. Sometimes feeling ill, sometimes not. I was feeling ill for one to three plus weeks each and every month of 2020 as it essentially zipped by.
I was unsure at times over that next year if I was having reoccurring covid (by a month or two into it, I had realized I had contracted the new novel coronavirus), or if I was catching new iterations of covid.
Or a new variation. I'd considered in the beginning when i realized what I had contracted, and survived, that I should write a book about it. But that first year or so I was just too exhausted and without energy to even think of it. I had brain fog. Weird blood clotting issues. My VA doctor had me take many tests and all came back looking like I was healthy. Except, I wasn't.
March 28, 2022. Again it was a Sunday night. but early the next morning I was in the Emergency Department of St. Michael's Medical Center in Silverdale, Washington, eleven miles from my home.
It was a very disturbing night that went from paramedics at my home for the first time in my life and at 2AM. That saw me with sinus tachycardia, driving myself to the hospital in Bremerton, where I live. Two miles away. At 3AM. Paramedics had given me the OK to drive myself before they left and having offered me the ambulance. But I wanted to do it myself.
I ended up driving around in the dark, unable to find a massive medical center. So I went home and tried to sleep. After a few hours I got up and called the Veterans Administration triage nurse. She told me to drive to the next down that morning to the emergency department. So I did. It turns out the hospital two miles away, which I had used for twenty years for my kids and my family, had closed down only six months previous, and I hadn't heard about it.
I got a Zio chest patch heart monitor to wear for two weeks and then I was sent home. A week later I had paramedics at my house, again on a Sunday, again at 2AM. This time for blood pressure that was far too high.
I had more tests and again, I was healthy. Except, I wasn't. As I started feeling better, well enough to think, I thought I should write that book about this experience and share what I had learned. It started slow, but I got something down on paper.
Eventually, I finished the book. Just as I had finished an internationally award winning documentary that spring of 2021, "Pvt. Ravel's Bolero", began as just a way to try to start thinking and working on something, anything, again.
And now that book is available, too.
"Suffering Long Covid" is now available as a book and ebook on Amazon. I have included my daily logs that I kept for my own benefit at first and then for my doctor to prove some of what I had been experiencing. I've also tried to support things I say in the book with references and links to information.
I'm not a medical professional but I am a researcher and writer. I thought my story was interesting and if nothing else, I had learned a lot about COVID-19 and Long Covid. As science and medicine learned, I learned. I had nothing else to do by feel ill and as I had energy, research what was happening inside me. Why I was so exhausted and kept feeling ill. While all the tests at hospitals said I was fine. When I wasn't, quite obviously.
The book was difficult to write, but got easier as time passed. It was interesting to read my logs as I was already months later forgetting how bad things had been. I realized I wish I had a book like this to have read, and maybe others might find it, in some way or another, useful to them.
So here it is...if you have long covid, and I hope you don't, sometimes it helps to see what others have gone though. if nothing else, there are some very interesting pieces of information and references in the book.
I wish you all well. Be healthy my friends!
Cheers! Sláinte !
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