From Blog-O-Vision City in the Teepee… it’s the Waiting Game!

Before I say another word… feel free to roll your eyes and close my blog.  I wouldn’t blame you.  I promised myself I wouldn’t keep writing about this godawful long-covid thing, but I can’t help it.  April 16 will mark the start of my fourth month dealing with this, but for some reason it feels longer.

I got covid the first week of December, it lasted one week, and precisely one month later on January 16 I began getting an intense pressure in my skull and sparkles of pain in my face and lips, and worried something bad was developing.  One month later on February 21 I told my friends at the senior center I’d be taking a leave of absence until this was over.

If you look back thru my posts, I thought it was my TMJ returning from a few years back; a month later, my PCP misdiagnosed it as chronic sinusitis.  I pretty much determined it was long covid, thanks to a couple of excellent PBS documentaries on Youtube and people with eerily similar symptoms on Reddit. 

In fact, these other people’s stories have been downright uncanny.  Ignoring the symptoms for a month, seeing their PCPs, getting misdiagnosed with sinus infections, eventually going to the ER and getting MRIs or CT-scans, being put on nerve drugs like amtriptyline or gabapentin.  (I’m on the latter.)  And then waiting.  That’s all you can do.

Friday morning I got my ER bill for March 22 and the two CT scans. $494.21.  It could’ve been a lot worse. 

I think that luck is on my side, though.  The pain and pressure in my head is 70% gone.  The facial pain is still here, from a dull burn to a heavier one as the day progresses, but Ben-Gay on my neck & face helps a lot come bedtime.

I’m dealing with pretty severe fatigue too, can’t explain it.  I feel okay unless I do something like walk to the store.  When I get home, I feel like I’ve been working in heavy construction all day.  I lay across my bed and pass out for 1-2 hours.

Also when I get up during the night to use the bathroom or get a drink of water, big dizzy spells.  And in the mornings… how do I say this.  Something that most men always wake up with.  I don’t anymore.  Not since February, anyway.

(And all of that is long before I started taking gabapentin.)

But I know I’m getting better, I can feel it in my bones.  Half of the people I’ve read about took anywhere from 4-6 months to recover enough to resume normal living; the other half took 1-3 years.  I will be in the first group, if you please.  Thanks God.

Here’s one good thing from all of this; for as long as I can remember, I’ve kept 2 tubs of ice cream in my freezer.  I’d have a bowl on Friday night, a BIG bowl of ice cream on Saturday night and a smaller bowl on Sundays.  Probably for the last 30 years.

I was all set to get a couple tubs of ice cream the Saturday I woke up with covid in early December.  I didn’t go out that day to buy any, but lost the taste for it after recovering a week later and haven’t touched it since. 

I haven’t been downstairs to my building’s exercise room in 3 months, but still managed to lose 12-13 pounds and keep it off.  So… thanks covid?

And thank YOU for reading.  My next post is going to be a funny (and true) story, about my neighbor I think.  Stay tuned!