I’ve been sick.
Admittedly, this has characterized most of 2022, since Adam started going to preschool. We had a nice little break of a month and a half during summer break, but then we got COVID. Once we recovered, Adam came down with a cold with fever at the end of July after going back to school, which I swiftly caught. On August 7th I lost my ability to smell and taste, and it took a full 10 days for it to start returning. After a couple weeks my low-grade fever passed and I was well enough to go to a wedding! I even went into the office for a day! But then my symptoms crashed back in. Antibiotics didn’t help. Prescription cough medicine didn’t touch the cough. I’m grateful that a chest x-ray didn’t show anything concerning, but it didn’t help get me answers. On Friday I did a virtual visit with a walk-in clinic and got a pair of inhalers to use twice a day, and a cough medicine that’s actually helping.
The doctor I saw on Friday doesn’t believe the proximity to a COVID infection is a coincidence. In spite of my bout with COVID seeming somewhat mild at the time, he said it’s likely that it weakened my already asthmatic lungs. Since I’m predisposed to lingering coughs, it came as no surprise that I’ve gotten so sick from “just a cold” while others in my house recovered quickly. Fortunately, he also believes that I should recover from my weakened lung state within six months or so. The failure of my senses of smell and taste to fully returned seems to also be in line with longer-term impact post-COVID, since I’ve now had several people tell me that theirs has come and gone a few times since their infection. In the meantime, the hope is that the inhalers will patch me up enough so that I can finally feel better.
Aside from the misery that is having COVID and then being hit with a month-long cold, it’s also a frustrating situation to be in life-wise. Every evening I’m tired and feeling extra sick, and do the bare minimum to keep the house going and our cat taken care of, and then I go to bed. No time for hobbies, very little time for reading or TV, and no time for the million things that I’d like to do around the house. When little Aaron outgrew his 18-24M clothes this month, it was a multi-week process to get the 2T clothes rotated in (dig clothes out of storage, wash them, pull out the 18-24M from the dresser, wait for laundry to spit out the remaining 18-24M clothes, pack them up, pack them away. Oh! Socks! Go through those too.). And suddenly both boys needed shoes. It’s made for a much more chaotic home experience than I’d like, and extra tasks like routinely sweeping through closets and cabinets to reorganize aren’t even being attempted right now.
I’ve also felt bad about how the kids are experiencing this summer. It was bad enough that our COVID precautions preclude us from much socialization and indoor activities, but while sick we’ve even had to curb many of the outdoor ones. I simply haven’t had the energy to take the boys out a lot, or do a lot of things with them. Even our weekend routine of outdoor dining has been disrupted, since we obviously don’t want to go out while sick. This past weekend I rallied the energy to do a few things, but I am also concerned I assuaged my guilt at the expense of my health, and I probably should have been resting more.
I’m feeling well enough to write this on a Tuesday evening instead of going straight to bed, so maybe things are improving, or maybe it’s just that new cough medicine.