How could have I been so naïve? My post Corona virus recovery was literally painful.
I thought that my two-week stay at the hospital and its associated isolation would be the last of it. It started off as just fatigue then it started showing signs of something nefarious going on. Even though I was tired all the time I was unable to sleep and at the same time, I felt very hungry but was unable to eat. Slowly my sleeplessness became full-blown insomnia and it started taking a toll on my mental health. Even what little I could eat tasted very bitter even though my mind how these goods are supposed to taste. So basically, my sense of smell and taste were non-existent.
A few days later, I truly felt what patients with arthritis go through. The weird feeling in a joint and the pain associated with it, joint feels like it has been filled with sand and you take extra precautions not move any of them. The first symptom of post-reactive arthritis for me was my left hip clicking whenever I got up from prone position to sitting, it almost felt like my head of the femur was slipping out of the acetabulum. Then it progressed to my knees, elbows, shoulders, and sacroiliac joint, all of them felt very stuffed and moving them around feel very gritty.
I was on the course of Rivaroxabann Dexamethasone, Zinc sulphate, Ascorbic acid, and weekly Cholecalciferol with Acetaminophen p.r.n. The Dexamethasone and Acetaminophen help to an extent with the joint issue. But the sleeplessness, fatigue, loss of appetite and gustatory issues still prevalent even 2 weeks post-discharge. Zinc sulphate tablet made my gastritis worse but thankfully it was on an O.D dose. After 2 weeks rivaroxaban was replaced with enteric-coated Aspirin.
At this stage I felt very helpless for the fact that I could not talk to anybody or I could not meet anybody and my mind was so bogged down that I could not think straight for myself. It had been almost three weeks since my diagnosis then I finally decided to head out of the room.
I went for a morning walk, with an N95 mask and a tracksuit. That felt like the best decision my brain was able to take in a while and felt rejuvenating, the cold autumn air on my face and sun on my body, Even though the mask prevented me from feeling the fresh air in my lungs but I could sense it be very different and refreshing. But this feeling was short-lived, soon after km I was exhausted and my join wanted to give way so I decided to limp back home to fight another day. But finally, in 2 weeks I felt like there was light at the end of the tunnel. And I also knew that this would require a lot of work.
So, from the next day I requested my mum to give me some extra protein with every meal, I got up very early in the morning so as to avoid any crowded areas and I made my way towards the foothills of Chamundi. I talk it slow even though I felt I could do a little more the girls this was about the long game. On the first day, all I could do slowly walk up to the foothills and head back. Then over the course of the week, I was able to walk in the foothills and climb about 500 stairs (about 1000 steps in total) and head back home. Even though this sounds like a great achievement but taking 1hr from something I was able to do in half an hour mean I had a long way to go. Once I was out of the acute illness phase, my brother joined me on these runs / jogs. We would run to the hotels or surrounding areas and then head back home initially was just about 2 km or sometimes even less, this did take the wind out of me. There was this one day when I was like “hey! I am ready! We can just go out and go out for a good jog/run.” Having said that, the context is that we were still in an all-mask environment, and I foolishly ended up wearing one of ICU 95 masks. And boy wasn’t for a surprise.
Update, Late Nov 2020. I’ve seen a lot of people complain of things like dyspnea, shortness of breath, breathlessness or chest pain. I was in for a surprise in terms of me experiencing that in a single 2 km run where I felt I was going to die! The first feeling was just literally unable to breathe, which quickly evolved into this difficulty / pain when you took every single breath. I do understand that a lot of people running though experience this you know just panting and breathlessness, but this was different in my opinion. And around the one-and-a-half-kilometer mark I felt a metallic taste in my breath / mouth I stopped running and did not see any blood streaking in my saliva or cough that I started to have. Now the pain was just somebody literally putting their hand down my throat into my lungs and violently trying to pull them out. That was just intense It took me about the next quite a few minutes to recover from that sensation and feeling. I somehow limped back home. I could see my brother next to me looking at me weirdly, just trying to understand what was happening to me, me panting, complaining of feeling of this bleeding in my nose and mouth, just sweating and probably pale looking. But since I said I was okay and started walking back home he kind of come down and was able to go back home and talk about this hour.
Update 2021, Nov. I’m at Kansas City, Kansas with a friend of mine from medical college. He was like “hey, let’s go play some basketball!” For which I agreed, and we start to have some good game. But 15 minutes or so the same feeling came back come on this sense of internal bleeding taste of blood in your mouth and somebody trying to pull my lungs out. Provided this was not a very prolonged or worse symptom compared to the initial encounter almost a year ago but it was still there. After all we are destined to die someday, might as well be today!
Update 2022, Dec. Well, I haven’t gotten a little lazy over the past 2 years since Covid initially hit. During this phase I have been blaming all my lack of stamina on this disease that should have been gone out of my system. But I do occasionally feel the symptoms that I will just insane. The worst I ever felt and embarrassed to was when I was with a lady friend, and I was so exhausted at night that she was about to call the emergency services / ambulance to just come check up on me and I just kept saying “Hey! Hold on, don’t do anything. I’ll be okay.” and eventually was ok! ufffffff that was embarrassing!!!