Dad, I Have Covid - Covid 2
The first weeks of Covid
One year into covid getting a message, “Dad, I have covid,” was a scary text. Our daughter is young, healthy and resilient but we were still very concerned. She followed up with, "You guys should quarantine." My wife and I are both teachers and just finishing up our summer vacation; we had been exposed to covid before and had relatively mild symptoms, so we were definitely more concerned about her well-being than ours.
We had just made a quick trip to Walmart to pick up my pain meds, antibiotics and a few other essentials, so we were set. Neither one of us had any signs of sickness. When our son came home from work, we told him what was going on and sent him to a separate part of the house. Deb got sick first, extreme tiredness, head cold and just felt like crap. Her covid lasted about ten days, but she remained tired for weeks. Zach, our son, got it shortly after with the severe hot and cold shivers and terrible aches. We didn’t see him much; he later said that on the third day of it he thought he was going to die. Luckily, he was over it by day four and felt fully recovered by day six. Our daughter Sara’s experience was more like Zach's; she was done with it in about eight days.
Two days in I had minor symptoms. I had high hopes that it wasn’t going to be bad. I had three days of antibiotics left from my oral surgery. By day four covid said, “Let's do this." It was different for me; it started with extreme diarrhea, hot and cold shivers, fatigue and fogginess. The nightmares came in between shiver attacks so even though I was tired, sleep didn’t come easy. By day six, I had a good morning and felt like it was turning around. The next day it hit me harder and by midday of the eighth day, I admitted defeat and asked my wife to take me to the ER.
