The good news is that, after more than three weeks fighting COVID-19, both Miss D. and myself have now officially tested negative for the disease. Her boss had said that she couldn't return to work unless and until that happened, due to the risk of infection, and I can't blame him. She tested negative before I did, but I had a worse dose of Kung Flu than she did, so that's not surprising. (When we both first caught it, about a year ago, I had an easier time than she did, despite being in poorer health and with more potential co-morbidities. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason behind the severity of any given infection.)
We're very glad to be feeling better, but there are lingering after-effects - again, worse than the first time we had this, a year ago. We're both really drained of energy, and can feel trashed after even a little exertion. Miss D. went back to the gym for the first time in three weeks yesterday, and was wiped out after a relatively short session of much lighter weight-lifting than usual. I'd say it's going to take us at least three months to get over that, and perhaps as long as six. Reading the accounts of others who've had COVID-19, it appears that's nothing unusual.
One lesson learned - again - is that having adequate pre-infection supplies of dietary supplements is a Very Good Thing. We were both taking additional multivitamins, Vitamin D, and zinc. When the infection hit us, according to the medics, this had apparently boosted our immune systems up front, so that our bodies were better equipped to fight it off. (A couple of nurses have expressed real surprise that someone like me - in his sixties, very overweight, having had two previous heart attacks, plus other health issues - fought it off with relatively little difficulty. They said that, according to the "norm", I should have ended up in hospital.)
Another Very Good Thing was that as part of my basic emergency preparations, I'd laid in a small supply of several antibiotics. COVID-19 has a serious tendency to spread to the lungs and produce pneumonia (which happened to one of our local friends - he spent five days in hospital on Remdesivir, plus took an oxygen cylinder home for a week). I didn't need to go to a doctor (which didn't happen at all while we were sick, because none were available, and/or all short-term appointments were filled), and didn't need to badger a pharmacy. I already had a Z-Pac and Doxycycline on hand, the first of which is standard for treating influenza and pneumonia, and the second of which is specific to pneumonia and similar infections. I began treating myself with them immediately, and this seems to have been a big part of recovering from the infection without too many difficulties.
Be that as it may, COVID-19 is no fun at all once it takes root in your system and grows. Wash your hands, take all other reasonable precautions, and try very hard not to become a victim. Definitely not recommended!
Peter
8 comments:
We have the preventative stuff on hand, and hubby (with all his co-morbidities) has been taking them since March last year. He got COVID in February, was scary sick for a week, then bored as heck for another week waiting for a negative result. I had it in late 2019 (and kept the cough as a souvenir - it still comes to visit if I spend time in a mask doing something strenuous or just breathing in the heat). I may have cought it again after my husband went back to work, but I spent one day in bed, and then was back to normal, so who knows?
My question, though, is how do you lay in a supply of antibiotics?
In much or the world, you can buy almost any meds over the counter. The medical monopoly in the US has a stranglehold here. Luckily I have a unusually decent doc myself.
Glad you're doing better. We had it back in November. The wife lost her senses of taste and smell and felt like total crap for a while. I simply had a cough for a few days, no worse than a mild cold. Neither of us developed a fever. There simply seems to be no telling how it'll roll.
@Dragon Lady: The easiest way to build up a reserve supply of antibiotics is to talk to your doctor, explain what you want and why, and ask him to write a prescription. I caution that it wouldn't be honest to expect your medical insurance to pay for it, because it's not an immediate medical need; but if you're willing and able to pay cash for the medication(s), there's no issue.
If your doctor won't help, there are places that sell antibiotics for animal use. These are typically human- and pharmaceutical-grade medications, just packaged and labeled for animal use only. I bought six different varieties from such an outlet some years ago, and I've used three of them so far without a single issue. They may be a bit more expensive than your local pharmacy, but if you want an emergency reserve, that may be a cost you simply have to pay.
There are pros and cons to using animal antibiotics, as the link below illustrates (please read it): but IMHO, the benefits outweigh the risks. YMMV.
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2019/11/26/veterinary-antibiotics-humans
Thanks Peter for the link. It's a good article and emphasizes most of the caveats about using vet meds for humans. There are a couple more points that I'll add.
I've said before that if you want to use vet meds, use the dosing tables for hogs. That sounds snarky, but it's dead serious. Our physiology and pharmacology is similar enough to be perfectly accurate.
One thing our doctors have always emphasized when prescribing antibiotics is to take them AS PRESCRIBED, to the end of the instructions. DO NOT discontinue them as soon as you feel better. That is the route to resistance for the bug in question. Resistant Gonorrhea came out of VietNam because GI's were using black market penicillin because they didn't want the whopping bolus in the butt that sick call would use.
I don't want to use antibiotics if I have a choice about it, and to that end I use any and all supplements to keep my immune system as strong as it can be. But one little bit of 'anecdotal evidence'. I once caught a feral cat in my kitchen, and in flinging it out the door, it bit me on my hand. I didn't think much of it, washed it up, didn't even need a band-aid. About four hours later, my hand was throbbing, the size of a softball, with red streaks running up my arm. Panic time, and off to ER. They gave me a script for Amoxicillin. I kind of pooh-poohed the idea, but took it as instructed. Twelve hours later, it was GONE; back to normal. I continued the script I was given, and have had a lot of respect for the stuff ever since.
Veterinary antibiotics have worked fine for me. I keep a supply in the refrigerator - Doxycycline and Cipro - for emergencies. Z pacs are no longer available that way, alas.
You did exactly what President Trump and all the people who got shouted down at the beginning of the Covidiocracy said to do.
Take supplements, take low-cost drugs, take antibiotics to fight the secondaries.
As far as I know, I haven't had much of a Wu Ping Cough attack. But I've had seasonal flus that have knocked me on my arse and made it difficult to do activities afterwards.
Then again, seasonal allergy attacks that have put me down for 2-3 weeks and given me incipient pneumonia and significant loss of muscle tone are a norm for me. Which should have been a perfect place for Chinky Pox to settle in and kill or severely wipe me out. But it didn't, because I take supplements, eat decent food, stand outside and soak up the sun, and do the whole 'wrap the body and sweat it out' thingy whenever I feel the least bit underweather. Works for me so far...
Glad to hear that y'all are feeling better. Nothing worse than being sick, except getting through the getting-over-it stage.
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