So, covid-pnumonia sucks (or blows... turns out you can do NEITHER!) (Patreon)

[The view from my isolation ward window... Its the roof a building. Also, charts are on computers now!  isnt that neat.]

So.

Back in the far off month of June I got a little sick.  You remember back when the world was just starting to end and the news was all awash with the symptoms of the plague, and how they present themselves?  It was pretty textboox.  One day I'm sniffley and sneezy, the next I'm sore, but I threw an excedrin at the soreness and powered through.  

For the most part, I was fine.

But then came "The Monday[tm]"  

That monday, the day after I was kinda sore but otherwise ok, I was FUUUUUCKED up.  See, when I was a wee lad I had asthma and a host of other respiratory problems.  I spent time in the hospital for chronic bronchitis, had to do the steam nebulizer in the ER, whole nine yards.  While Ive grown out of that, I'm no stranger to respiratory distress.  

This is not that.  

You feel, largely, fine.  Until you do something.  Doing things, ANY things.  Completely and totally wipes you out.  Basic movement robs you of ALL of your oxygen and thus all of your energy.   And I do mean all.  It's not, "whew, that was a tough workout Id better rest", it's , "I have to stop right now, or I'm falling on the ground".

FOR EXAMPLE!

I wake up on "that Monday" and I walk form my bedroom, to my kitchen, like I do every day.  Its MAYBE 15 total feet?  That 5-10 seconds of walking from one room to the other had me collapsed in a chair at my table, panting like a dog for 5 minutes?  Maybe more?  You pant there in a heap for way, WAY longer than you know is normal... 

And then you feel fine.

So, for a couple days this was the routine.  I do something, and am destroyed.  I figured that I was "ok" and as long as I didn't exert myself I would burn through this obvious covid infection in a few days.  That.. Wednesday I believe, I told my family I was sick and not to visit (brother left me some supplies outside my door :P )  and if I wasn't doing demonstrably better by say, Friday, then Id consider a hospital trip.  

Looking back on it I was doing way worse than I was letting on, as is my way.  I was too weak to do things like, walk into the kitchen AND cook food, or say, stand at the sink AND wash the dishes in it. 

But I was fine, really...

Thursday my mother comes over anyway all masked up and makes me some soup.  (d'awww)

Friday I don't remember much of, I think I was in bed all day. But hey, don't feel any worse so there's no need to-

Saturday.

Saturday morning I'm sitting on my toilet, not using it mind you I just had to sit down, panting.  See my bathroom is riiight smack dab in middle of the distance between my bedroom and my kitchen.  So I'm sitting there, struggling to reach the point where I can stand back up and do.. anything,  when I decide, that yeah it's hospital time.

PART TWO: Hospital time!!

[Breakfast on day... i wanna say 3?  of Isolation.  That door nearest the camera is the bathroom.  That's too far away without a nurses help.]

So I'm in the ER, sequestered in a little room by myself.  Hospital was really quiet that day so at least I was spared insane wait times.  

"Why do you think you have Covid?" 

Every new face would ask that... I think, everyone wears masks at the hospital and I don't know what a single person there actually looks like :P

I tell them the tale of the last week in no doubt more detail than I'm relaying here as memories are fallible and time has passed.  I find out I had a fever of 103.1... huh.

Then they stab me with needles and steal MY BLOOD!  

They, of course, make no diagnoses of any kind as they give me 2 IV's (including giving me a new IV scar, right next to one I have from when i was... 11?  When I was hospitalized for pneumonia!) an oxygen mask and say they will see what the tests say.  

Time passes, 

They poke my brain with a Q-tip and give me chest x-rays, and a while later a doctor who's name I forget tells me that yeah, it looks like I've got covid so they are going to put me upstairs for A COUPLE DAYS?  WHAT?  ARGH!

Of course it's super late before they have a room for me and wheel me up to isolation around 11pm (I got to the hospital around 2pm?) and they give me the standard Ass-out hospital gown. 

Yay..

Soon after I find something on TV (it was probably deadliest catch... why is there so much Deadliest CATCH?)  A tall doctor comes in and tells me that since I first really got sick within a week they are going to put me on an experimental treatment drug called... *looks it up*   

Remdesivir.

WAIT FIVE DAYS?!!?!  

Yep, 5 day treatment.  Okayyyy SINCE I DON'T WANNA DIE... I GUESS.

They hook up my tubes to the horrible, BEEPING, IV machine and decide to remove the tube from my left arm and ALSO put it in my right arm.  They give me pills to take  They STEAL MORE OF MUH BLUUD, and hook up a hefty sack of Remdesivir to my Veins.

DAY TWO!  I'm skipping over the "the nurse woke me up 5 times while I was asleep", because it is known.  

The physical therapy nurse comes in and says they are going to get me a chair because they don't want me lounging in bed all day (watching Deadliest catch and.. one of those cop shows)

Then she wheels in this hilariously large and unwieldy green loveseat and demands I relocate to it.    Okay, I plunk my exposed ass down into the (covered with hospital paper thankfully) chair and like before all of my oxygen is stolen by goblins.  This was my worst day really, they had to crank my oxygen to get me nice and stable again but once I was seated and relaxed I... watched Deadliest catch.  Or one of those cop shows...

From here things are more routine and honestly not very interesting.  Every day nurses and doctors would talk to me wearing full disposable yellow virus protection suits that they would yank off and throw away before they left my room. Every day I would improve, and they would tentatively turn down my supplemental oxygen.  Everyday they would jab me in the "arm or gut?" with medicine to prevent blood clots so I wouldn't randomly die.  Doctors are big on bowel movements so stool softeners a plenty And it turns out I can totally taste saline injections... wild. 

Days in my tiny isolation room went by, and I was doing really well.  The nurses couldn't elaborate obviously, but were always glad when I told them that i was feelin' fine.   

Well part of "feelin fine" Is being able to do things without an endlessly hissing oxygen mask, and later nose-tube-thing.  So while in isolation they gave me this plastic thingie to suck on.  Yeah it has this elaborate doctorey name, but it's a plastic thing you suck on to exercise your lungs.  It has a score on it and everything.  I remember when I got it I could only hit 500, the lowest score.  I still have it around here somewhere.

I also remember in one of the earlier days I got from my chair back into bed without calling the nurse and they were like "that's good!  NOW NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!!!" (editors note: he did it again.)

Welp, after five days I was done with the remdesivivivir, AND they told me since I was no longer contagious they would move me out of isolation and into a bigger room.  Yay!  They found a room for me aaaat  2 am?  I cant remember BECAUSE I WAS SUPER ASLEEP...

[Lunch, one of the final days.  It took me forever to find decent food on the menu, but this sandwich?  This was a good sandwich.]

My new room was GIGANTIC.

This was actually good, because it gave me room to practice walking around.  That's not really a phrase you want to have experience with.  "Walking Practice"

See the bathroom was waaaay on the opposite end of the room, not 5 feet away like in my old digs.  I would get up, wrap my incredibly long oxygen tube around my arm, and march my way to the bathroom.  No nurses, just me.  You never realize how big a deal basic mobility is until you lose it.  Granted it was still a struggle, but everyday they would turn down the oxygen, and see what my blood oxygen would do when I would move around.  

I was only in the larger room for.... 2 and a half days?  Maybe?  The doctors were eager to let me go home, and had I needed it they would have provided me with a free oxygen bottle!  (DO NOT GIVE ME FLAMMABLE GAS!!)

Going home!  They let me out on the 3rd of July, and while I was headed home I wasn't completely better.  They made it clear it could take weeks for my lung function to get back to normal and to take it easy, keep sucking on your plastic suck-toy with a professional sounding name, and that they would be keeping an eye on me to make sure I was ok.  

Four days later I had a follow up visit back at the hospital where they were pleased with my recovery, 20 days later I had another check up to go to and a nurse from the hospital called me every week for a MONTH, to check on me.

IM DOING FINE... mostly.  

Doctors put me on blood pressure medication cause "it's a little high".  They gave me an emergency inhaler when I got out that i haven't had to use, and then my doctor gave me THREE MORE OF THEM when I got my Blood pressure medicine refilled... uh, thanks.  I now have 800 doses of lung mist.  (Mist for your lungs, not mist MADE of lungs.. i think)

The only long term effects I really feel is just a lack of strength.  Being hospital-bound will do that and I'm slowly working myself back into a respectable shape.

Oh and a multi-thousand dollar hospital bill.  But I'll work it out. Don't put off medical insurance people, cause then you'll get covid!

So, This was super long.  Thanks for reading my DISEASE RAMBLE I guess.  If you made it to the end, uh.. here, have a preview of that Cinderace I said I was gonna draw.