Covid Happened

Chapter 4: Covid Scare

Little did I know my life was forever about to change. As I said earlier, I continued to work. I wore my mask. Avoided large crowds. Only went out to shop or through a drive thru for dinner. I made sure that I washed my hands even more frequently than I already did on a regular basis. I followed the rules and guidelines sent out by the CDC. I did what I was supposed to do. Then one Monday morning a week or two into June, I went to work as usual, and felt fine. A couple of hours in I started feeling bad. My face was red and hot. I could feel the heat coming off my eyes, which is how I know when I have a fever. My body started aching. And I started freaking out. My boss had me take my temperature right there at work and it was 100.4F. God how I hate that number. I was immediately sent home and told to go to the doctor. I went straight there of course.

 I was the first patient in that small convenient care clinic to be administered a Covid test. On top of feeling bad I was so nervous because I had heard the horror stories of how the tests were administered and how much they hurt. Those particular stories turned out to be true and I'm pretty sure that part of my brain was scraped out through my sinus cavity that day, but I made it through and was told to go home and quarantine myself away from the world until my test results came back. At that time, it was taking every bit of 4 or 5 business days to get the tests results back. Talk about the agony of being patient. In the meantime, my fever continued to rise. It peaked out at around 102F and stayed close to there for the next couple of weeks. Yes, I said weeks. I also had body aches and terrible joint pain. Muscle weakness. Exhaustion to the point of nearly passing out from the exertion it took to just walk to the restroom. I believe it was about 4 days after the test was administered that I got my first negative result. The relief I felt was indescribable. But this whole ordeal somehow made it surreal. This deadly virus, with no cure or vaccine in sight, was at my doorstep now. In reality it had been there all along, but I never really, really saw it until just then. I suppose we all like to think that "it won't happen to me".

I remember one night in particular that I was lying in bed next to my husband and I started crying and just couldn't stop. I was scared to death for my friends and family who were immune compromised because at first, if you'll remember, it was thought that Covid hit this group of people, and the elderly, the hardest. My mom had had a heart attack scare earlier in the year and they still weren't sure what was going on with her heart. My stepmom and one of my aunts have severe asthma. I have 2 other aunts that have multiple autoimmune diseases. I was so sure that if any of them caught it, they wouldn't make it through. Myself, my husband, and my son, who was 17 at the time, were fat kids but otherwise healthy, well for the most part anyway. None of us had been diagnosed with any autoimmune diseases and we were all young. I was turning 37 in June of 2020. Never in a million years did I think that it would cause us any more trouble than a bad cold if we were to catch it. I have never been so wrong about something in my entire life.

That first damn fever. 100.4. Ugh! That fever is what started the downward spiral for me. Getting back to the weeks after I received my negative Covid test result...you will have to forgive me as my memory starts to get fuzzy right about now in the timeline. A week after the negative test result my condition was not changing for the better. I started to develop a rash on my face, neck, and chest. It looked like I had a very severe sunburn, and it felt like it too. And my God how it itched! I was barely sleeping because the itching kept me up. I assumed I was having an allergic reaction to something, but I had no idea what. My body had never been one to waste any time when I react to something new, it usually happens within the first few hours after I encounter it. Like any normal thinking person, I assumed the rash and the rest of the symptoms were two different things. I took over the counter antihistamines. I used anti-itch creams, calamine lotion, sprays with lidocaine. Nothing helped the itching, the pain, or the rash. In fact, it was spreading. It had made it down to the bottom of my torso by the time I couldn't take it anymore and went back to my doctor. She looked at the rash, took my temperature, saw it was 102.5, and sent me straight to the emergency room. There I sat for many hours while they drew blood, took urine, and finally, hours later, examined me.

The Emergency Room doctor had no idea what was wrong with me. Finally, the hospital pharmacist came in to ask me some questions about the medications that I was taking. I had indeed started a new medication, but I had started taking it 2 or 3 weeks before the first symptoms appeared. He said that that was common with that particular medication. The conclusion was drawn that I had both a virus of some sort and an allergic reaction to the new medication. They gave me a shot of diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and a bottle with five prednisone steroid pills in it, then sent me on my way. I took the prednisone religiously. And within 3 or 4 days the rash had just about cleared up. None of the other symptoms had gone away though.

So, back to the doctor I went. She drew blood and started looking deeper for any signs of a possible autoimmune disorder. That could explain every one of my symptoms. She got a positive result back on a test that indicated some form of Lupus, but she said that I would have to make an appointment to see a rheumatologist to get a definitive diagnosis, as a blood test alone cannot determine if one has Lupus. She told me just to rest and take it easy until I could see the specialist. That was all my body was willing to do anyway so those orders were not hard to follow.