Day -4: Today Big Girl was out of isolation following her positive Covid test and I was able to leave my parents house and move back home. I was so excited to hug the kids and to be back at home with all my family.
Day -3: Big Fella tells us that 4 of his friends have tested positive for Covid and that he had been sat next to one of them in all his lessons yesterday. He’s convinced he’s got Covid (despite the lateral flow test coming back negative) and refuses to go to school. He’s too big for me to pick up and bundle into the car so he has the day off.
Day -2: We test Big Fella again before school and the lateral flow test comes back negative again. He says he doesn’t feel great but Hubby and I think he’s just trying to get another day off school and we tell him he’s going. Well he went but he only lasted an hour before he was ringing us and saying he felt really poorly and needed to come home. Hubby went to pick him up and he went straight to bed when he got home so he must have been feeling crap.
Day -1: We do another lateral flow test on Big Fella and this time it comes back positive. “I told you I had Covid two days ago but you didn’t believe me” he tells me and Hubby and we both feel like the worlds shittest parents. Hubby and I decide that to limit my exposure and to try and protect me from Covid I should move back in with my parents. Luckily I hadn’t unpacked my bags from earlier in the week so off I go again. I’m getting a bit fed up with Covid dictating so much of my life, even to the point of whether I can live in my own house. I do believe if you’re going to get it you’ll get it. I could pick it up when I pop into Tesco or go to the post office. But if it keeps Hubby happy I will move out; hopefully this will be the last time.
Day 0: Went to look at new motability cars today. Have had a right headache this afternoon but I was determined to still go out to see The Magic Numbers at the Rescue Rooms with Hubby. The gig has been rearranged so many times due to the pandemic and it’s our first time out out together. I know Hubby worries about keeping me safe because I’m ECV (extremely clinically vulnerable) but my illness has taken so much away from me and made my world so small and I refuse to allow it to become any smaller worrying about Covid.
Day 1: I’m exhausted from last night and slept until 1pm. My whole body aches and my head is still pounding but I assume that it was because I overdid it yesterday. The gig was great but it left me with what I call an ‘energy hangover’. It’s like a hangover (but no booze has been involved) and I need a day or two to recharge my batteries.
Day 2: I’ve had a headache for days now that I can’t shift and my body still aches. I assumed it was because I had been quite busy the last few days but thought that I should do a Covid lateral flow test just to be on the safe side. I couldn’t believe it when it came back positive.
I then went to the local walk through testing site to have a PCR test done. Once I was back at Mum and Dads I went straight to my bedroom where I will be self isolating. I could go home as now I have Covid the risk of living with Big Fella while he has it is redundant. But I don’t want the kids to know I have it as I know they will really worry about me. And I also don’t want Big Fella to feel guilty that he might have given it to me, especially if I become really unwell with it. That’s too much responsibility for a child to have to bear and besides although it’s likely I caught it from him I could have caught it anywhere. Mum and Dad did lateral flow tests which both came back negative but now I’m worried that I’ve given it to them and it’s just not showing up on the test just yet, the same as with Big Fella.
Day 3: I feel awful. My head is pounding, I’ve got a sore throat, my body hurts to touch, I’ve got a blocked nose, temperature and I’m coughing, not a lot but I wasn’t coughing yesterday. I can barely move my head off the pillow and when I stand up to go to the loo I feel dizzy and faint. It’s like having flu and it’s not very nice.
Day 4: I still feel like crap. When I was in hospital in Cornwall I tore my stomach muscles from all the vomiting and when I cough they’re really hurting in that exact place. Mum isn’t feeling well and she’s been in bed most of the day. I’m really worried I’ve passed it on to her.
Day 5: If it’s at all possible I feel worse than yesterday. The constant headache is making my eyes sore and the body aches make any movement agony. Mum has tested positive on a lateral flow test so has gone to get a PCR test done. I feel awful that in trying to protect myself from catching Covid I’ve come to stay with my parents and inadvertently ended up spreading it to them. Well, so far Dad seems to have the immune system of a champion; fingers crossed he doesn’t get it too.
Day 6: I spoke too soon. Dad’s got symptoms and after Mum’s PCR test came back positive Test & Trace got in touch with him and told him to self isolate until he gets the results back from his PCR test. If we are all positive do we still have isolate from each other or just the outside world? I actually feel a little bit better today. My headache has eased slightly and the body aches are a tad less painful. I did the
antibody test today. This involved pricking a finger and collecting the blood in a special little test tube. This will show whether or not I have antibodies to Covid. It can even tell if the antibodies are from having had Covid or from being vaccinated. Or it could show that I haven’t developed antibodies which means I know I will have to be extra careful to prevent me from catching it again.
Day 7: Somehow Dad’s PCR test has come back negative. Out of the three of us he’s the one who has the worse cough so we were certain he had the ‘Vid too but maybe he has this ‘super cold’ that’s doing the rounds instead. He’s convinced that it’s because he had the Phizer vaccine whereas me and Mum both had the Astra Zeneca one. I had started to feel a little better yesterday but this morning the headache and body aches are back with a vengeance and I’ve lost my sense of taste and smell. I only realised this when I brushed my teeth and the usually minty toothpaste tasted of nothing. It was very strange.
Day 8: I slept really badly last night. One minute I was hot, the next freezing cold. But when I did wake up this morning after a couple of hours sleep my headache wasn’t quite as bad as it has been so that’s good. Big Girl rang me yesterday and asked why I hadn’t come home as Big Fella had finished isolating. The kids still don’t know I’ve got Covid so I told her that I wasn’t feeling great and that I could rest better at Mum and Dad’s. She seemed happy with that answer and although I always usually try to tell them the truth about my health I think on this occasion the lie is to protect them so it’s justified. When I go home I will of course tell them that I’ve had Covid but then they will see me feeling much better and won’t have to worry that Covid will kill me off because I will have survived it.
Day 9: Woke up today and actually felt a little bit better. The headache and body aches have eased off, although not gone entirely and I’ve managed to get out of bed and have a shower. I got the results back from my antibody test.
So I do have antibodies, most likely from being double jabbed so fingers crossed I won’t get Covid again after this.
Day 10: Last night I went to sleep with my arms wrapped around the sick bowl. I felt really ill and half expected to wake up in the night with symptoms of a bowel obstruction. I only slept about 3 hours and was awake waiting for the news to start at 6am. I felt absolutely awful. My headache was back, my body was sore to touch and if I moved it was agony. I ended up dropping off to sleep about 9.30, just as Jeremy Vine was starting, and I pretty much slept the whole day. I only woke up when my alarm went off to remind me to take my meds! I don’t know if this is still Covid making me feel like this or if there’s something else going on but I feel like shit. I’m was supposed to be going home tomorrow but if I feel like this tomorrow I won’t be going anywhere.
Day 11: I expected to be home with Hubby and the kids today and I was supposed to be going to the hairdressers to have a cut and colour. But instead I’m still in bed at my parents house feeling like shite. I feel marginally better than yesterday but I cannot believe how ill I still feel. I actually rang Hubby last night around 11pm crying cause I felt so unwell. And you know me, I’m a tough old bird. I think it’s the fact that it’s dragging on so long. After a bit of Googling I’ve found out that if you have a weakened immune system and get Covid then it can take up to 3 weeks for the body to get the virus under control, and then it can take up to 12 weeks before you’re ‘back to normal’- although my body is so messed up I have no idea any more what my baseline ‘normal’ is any more. I’m finding it hard to manage my feeds and instead of unhooking each morning I’m swopping the empty bag of feed for a bag of saline. Doing that makes it’s easier than doing a full disconnection every day but the giving set (the tube that delivers the feed into the Hickman line) can only be used for 48 hours so I do still have to disconnect. But doing it every other day is better than every day. It’s times like this that you just want to curl up and not worry about TPN feeds but I know that if I don’t connect I will end up dehydrated and feeling even worse.
Day 12: I only slept about 3 hours last night. The body aches were so painful I just couldn’t get comfortable. I was hoping to feel better today but I still feel like crap. I think ended up falling asleep about 1pm and slept until 8pm. I woke up in agony- my head and throat are so, so painful and my body just hurts so much. And I’m dehydrated cause I realised that when I put my TPN feed up last night I forgot to switch the pump on so the feed just sat in the bag all night instead of getting pumped into my Hickman line and into my body. I made sure to hit the on button when I connected tonight!!! Covid has really hit me hard. It feels like the worst flu I’ve ever experienced and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Day 13: I’ve managed to have a shower and wash my hair. I still feel crappy but I felt so disgusting and my hair was so greasy that I forced myself out of bed. The water was actually painful on my body- that’s how sensitive the body aches have made me. But I do feel better for being clean! I’m thinking of going home today. It’s been 2 weeks since I last saw the kids (and the dog) and I’m really missing them. Hubby has been popping up every day with my feed so I’ve seen him for a few minutes but of course I miss him too. I sometimes feel like I’m not a proper wife or mum cause I’m only ever there part time, whether that’s cause I’m in hospital (or more recently at my parents) or because I’m in bed at home. I hate missing out of stuff and always having to caveat every request for an outing or event with “if I’m well enough”. I’ve missed out on so much and I try to be grateful for the things I do get to do but it’s hard not to feel a bit bitter about it all. It’s only going to be a couple of years before Big Girl potentially goes to Uni, and Big Fella won’t be far behind her and I want to make the most of the time we have as a family before they fly the nest. This is why I get so frustrated that there’s no date for my surgery. Every twinge, each time I feel sick or am in pain I wonder if this is the start of another obstruction and I have to psych myself up mentally to deal with it if it is. Trouble is all my recent obstructions and now Covid have drained me physically and mentally that I feel like I’m running on empty.
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